
Class. 
BooL 



ElnM. 



iUl 



GoipghtN?. 



n 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 



PSYCHICAL 
INVESTIGATIONS 

SOME PERSONALLY- OBSERVED PROOFS OF SURVIVAL 



BY 

J. ARTHUR HILL 

Author of " New Evidences in Psychical Research," " Religion and 
Modern Psychology," " Spiritualism and Psychioal Research," etc. 



¥ 



GASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 

1917 






\0^ 

\1 



4. 



APR 21 1917 < 



•©CI.Aint.2919 



PREFACE 

In debatable matters, such as psychical research, 
readers may naturally wish for information which shall 
enable them to estimate the amount of a writer's bias. 
It may therefore be useful to affirm that, at the begin- 
ning of my investigations, my prejudices and wishes 
were opposed to the conclusions which the facts gradu- 
ally forced upon me. If I am now biased in favour of 
the belief in personal life after death, it is objective 
fact, not subjective preference, that has brought it 
about. And my judgments have not been hasty. I 
have worked at the subject for over eleven years. 

Chapters I., II., and X. have appeared as articles 
in the Quest, Nineteenth Century and After, and Occult 
Review respectively. I thank the Editors and Pub- 
lishers for their kind permission to reprint. The 
remainder of the book appears now for the first time. 

I must beg the reader's indulgence for the repetition 
in the central verbatim reports, of certain matter which 
appears in earlier chapters. It seemed desirable to 
present this matter in connected form as an easily- 
readable introduction to the detailed records ; but the 
latter are necessary also, for in these things fullness 
and exactness are essential. 

J. A. H. 

Bradford. 



" Cebes answered : I agree, Socrates, in the greater part of 
what you say. But in what concerns the soul, men are apt to be 
incredulous ; they fear that when she has left the body her place 
may be nowhere, and that on the very day of death she may perish 
and come to an end — immediately on her release from the body, issuing 
forth dispersed like smoke or air and in her flight vanishing away 
into nothingness. If she could only be collected into herself after 
she has obtained release from the evils of which you were speak- 
ing, there would be good reason to hope, Socrates, that what you 
say is true. But surely it requires a great deal of argument and many 
proofs to show that when the man is dead his soul yet exists, and has 
any force or intelligence." — Plato, Phssdo (Jowett's trans.). 

"I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again 
and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the 
dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion 
than the evil." — Ibid. (Socrates speaking). 



CONTENTS 



I. Immortality . . . 

II. Investigation : Methods and Examples 

III. Further " Meeting " Cases . 

IV. Other Incidents .... 
V. Introduction to Detailed Reports 

VI. Medium's Letters, and Reports . 
Sittings : 

1. July 21st, 1914 (with Wilkinson) 

2. December 14th, 1914 

3. January 15th, 1915 

4. November 19th, 1915 

5. January 19th, 1916 

6. February 17th, 1916 

7. April 12th, 1916 

8. April 19th, 1916 

9. June 5th, 1916 

10. August 2nd, 1916 

11. September 11th, 1916 (with Tom 

Tyrrell) 



1 

10 
28 
40 
51 
57 

59 

62 

67 

78 

81 

89 

98 

104 

119 

128 

142 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Sittings (continued) : 

12. September 22nd, 1916 (with Wil- 

kinson) ..... 164 
Table of Sittings, with Principal 

Names and Incidents . .170 
A Crucial Test .... 171 

13. March 2nd, 1916 (with A. V. Peters) 174 

14. March 3rd, 1916 „ 184 

VII. Of Mediums, Sitters, and "Trivial" 

Evidence ..... 198 

VIII. False Statements and their Explana- 

tion, and Remarks on Wilkinson's 

" Forms " . . . . .205 

IX. Home Mediumship .... 218 

X. Telepathy and Survival . . . 225 

XL Influences or Rapport-Objects . . 235 

XII. Psychical Phenomena in Earlier 

Times ...... 244 

XIII. Pre -Existence and the Nature of 

the After-Life .... 254 

XIV. Psychical Research and Religion . 269 
Index ....... 285 



PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

CHAPTER I 

Immortality 

AT different times, or at the same time in different 
J-\^ minds, different aspects of Religion are empha- 
sized. One school may lay stress on morals and social 
duty ; another may emphasize the sacramental aspect ; 
a still more thoroughly mystical school may concern 
itself with attaining divine union without special 
symbolism ; and no doubt many other divisions or 
subdivisions might be specified. All are good in their 
way, for all of them are helpful to one or other of us. 
But in the present terrible times, when a great war 
has spread mourning through many lands, there is 
another aspect which inevitably comes into special 
prominence ; namely, the question of the continuity 
of the personal self past the wrench of bodily death. 
These millions of splendid young men who have made 
the great sacrifice just at the period when life was 
most dear — can we reasonably believe that they are 
gone out of existence, that such a superb triumphing 
of will over instinct and self is followed by annihila- 
tion ? We feel that any such belief would involve 
pessimism of the most radical kind. It would con- 
demn the Universe ; and we feel that it cannot be 
true. But we want more than feeling, for this is a 

B 



2 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

scientific age. We must consider the subject in the 
dry light of reason. What, then, can we say about 
survival of bodily death ? And, to clear the ground, 
we must first discuss the more usual term of " immor- 
tality." 

Dictionaries mostly say that immortality is the 
condition or quality of being immortal, and that 
" immortal " means " exempt from death," which, 
indeed, is its obvious etymological signification. Im- 
plicitly, then, if I say that I — the " I " as known to 
me — am immortal, I mean that the existence of that 
self is endless ; that I shall go on for ever. A very 
depressing and indeed terrifying thought, as the chiM 
in Emerson's essay realized. " What ! will it never 
stop ? What ! never die ? never, never ? It makes 
me feel so tired ! " * 

But a further question arises. How can we go on 
being the same for ever ? We find in our present 
life, which is all we have to judge by, that we are con- 
tinually changing. We are ceaselessly hiving new 
experiences, by the external action of the world (in- 
cluding other human beings) upon us through our 
senses, by the so-to-speak internal action of the natural 
development and ageing of our own bodies, and by 
intuitions. There is alteration, growth, progress for- 
ward. We acquire larger and larger experience-fields ; 
and even when in extreme age the memory for details 
begins to wane, there often and perhaps generally 
remains a mellow wisdom, a sort of serene ripeness, 
which strikes us as superior — judging by the highest 
standards — to the phase of great knowledge of detail, 
which preceded it. In short, there is change and 
development. The man at seventy is very different 
1 Essay on Immortality. 



IMMORTALITY 3 

from what he was at seven, or from what he was just 
after birth. If, then, a short seventy years can thus 
transform an individual quite out of recognition, 
making him more different from himself of seventy 
years ago than he is from any other fellow-adult, and 
tremendously more different than he is from a fellow- 
septuagenarian of the same nationality and class, what 
shall we say of the possibilities of endless aeons ? Do 
we not perceive that this idea of personal immortality 
is a sort of verbal self-contradiction ? If there is to 
be continued experience of any conceivable kind, we 
shall change out of all recognition, and shall there- 
fore not be the " same." It is an inaccuracy to say 
that the septuagenarian is the " same " as the baby 
from which he has evolved. Much less can we remain 
the " same " after long periods of time, filled with 
new experiences. The tree is not the same as the 
acorn from which it grew ; it has less resemblance 
to it than it has to other trees. Similarly, taking the 
reality of Time for granted, for the purpose of the pre- 
sent argument — though as a matter of fact this doc- 
trine is debatable — and assuming continued experi- 
ence, on the analogy of the present life, we see that 
if we are immortal we shall develop into beings of 
some inconceivably superior order — trees to our present 
acorns — much more like each other than like our 
present selves. There will be no identity with these 
present selves. " Persons " are not immortal ; for 
their personality changes. 

Even if we make the venturesome suppositions of 
reincarnation and the recovery of all past memories 
in some future condition, the difficulty will still re- 
main. There has been development, increase of 
experience, growth, and the final product is not the 



4 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

same thing as the thing that began. Change involves 
death — the death of the preceding state. Personal 
immortality, then, if it connotes experience at all — 
and we can conceive no consciousness without experi- 
ence being involved — and if Time is fundamentally 
real, is a contradiction in terms, and cannot be dis- 
cussed. 

Personal survival of bodily death, however, is a 
more defensible phrase. It may be incorrect to say 
that I am the same person that I was ten minutes 
since — strictly speaking, it is incorrect — but as a use- 
ful though loose phrase it is allowable. And if it is, 
it is equally allowable to say that I may be the same 
person five minutes after death that I was five min- 
utes before it. Such short periods do not allow of 
such development as to change our forms of mani- 
festation beyond recognition. The word " same " 
conveys at least some meaning. There is close simi- 
larity, if not identity. We are not yet concerned 
with the question of whether persons do survive death, 
but only with the question of legitimacy of terms, in 
order to clear the ground. Personal immortality, then, 
is a meaningless or self-contradictory expression and 
must be avoided. Personal survival of death is legiti- 
mate, being based on common usage, and having a 
meaning, though a vaguely- denned one. And, indeed, 
this personal survival of bodily death is, for the most 
part, what people really mean by immortality. They 
do not, as a rule, hanker after endless ages of exist- 
ence, or worry themselves about the metaphysics of 
Time. No ; they merely want an extension, so to 
speak, of the present state of affairs ; some assurance 
or some hope that death does not mean an utter dark- 
ness and annihilation. They want to believe that it 



IMMORTALITY 5 

is " a covered way, leading from light to light, through 
a brief darkness," as Longfellow and most of his 
brother poets have thought. 

At least, it is the general notion that this is what 
people do want to believe and are ready to believe, on 
sufficient reason or evidence being produced. Whether 
it is as much so as is supposed may be doubted. The 
state of mind of the average individual with regard to 
the question of his wishes about a future life is pro- 
bably rather chaotic. If you ask a man whether he 
wants a future life or not, and if he is a man who 
thinks for himself and does not automatically respond 
with the stock phrases of his pastors and masters, he 
will answer in one or other of various and perhaps 
equally surprising ways. He may say " Yes " or 
" No," or that he doesn't care and never thinks about 
it if he can help it — which last answer would probably 
be true for very many people who would be rather 
shocked at the idea of admitting it ! But, indeed, there 
is no harm, but rather good, in facing ourselves frankly 
on this as on all other questions. There can be no 
good in sham and hypocrisy and self-deception of any 
kind. There is nothing to be ashamed of in the admis- 
sion that you never think about immortality or sur- 
vival if you can help it. Certainly it was illogical 
of the man who expected to go to everlasting bliss 
when he died, but did not want to talk about such 
depressing subjects ; but it is not illogical to avoid 
the subject if you have no particular convictions about 
the everlasting bliss. And, after all, it is this world 
that we are living in, and there is plenty to do in it. 
If we were continually speculating about the next we 
should neglect many duties. We are social beings, 
with various obligations to our fellows. 



6 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

And this brings us to another consideration, namely, 
that of the fundamental unity, or possible unity, of 
many things which now seem sundered. The late 
Professor James said, in his free-and-easy way — as if 
it didn't matter much — that a sort of anima mundi, 
thinking in all of us, seems a more promising hypo- 
thesis than that of "a lot of absolutely individual 
souls." 1 Our reception of this cavalier remark will vary 
according to temperament. Those who want to " re- 
main themselves," like Peer Gynt when the Button- 
Moulder wanted to melt him down again for a fresh 
start, will resent it. They will not like the idea that 
they are not really individuals — separate and walled-off 
entities, which will for ever remain themselves. A 
friend of mine, a man of heart and head, told me not 
long ago of his feelings when looking out over the sea. 
The thought occurred to him that human individuals 
were perhaps only like the wavelets which rose and fell 
on the water's surface ; parts of a greater whole, but 
still only temporarily existing forms, evanescent, con- 
tributory but non-essential, relatively unimportant. 
And the thought filled him with sadness : if he had 
believed it true, his sadness would have reached the 
point of despair. Curiously enough, this same thought 
has no terror for me. I feel more like Mrs. Stetson : — 

What an exceeding rest 'twill be 
When I can leave off being Me ! 
To think of it I at last be rid 
Of all the things I ever did 1 

* * * * * 

Why should I long to have John Smith 
Eternally to struggle with ? 

1 Principles of Psychology, vol. i., p. 346. 



IMMORTALITY 7 

. . . Rest and Power and Peace 
Must surely mean the soul's release 
From this small labeled entity, 
This passing limitation — Me ! 1 

However, perhaps both my friend and I are right. 
Perhaps we survive death and pass on into a better 
but not wholly dissimilar state : — 

No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, 
But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules — 
And utter knowledge is but utter love — 
Ionian Evolution, swift or slow, 
Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening height, 
An ever lessening earth, 2 

and then, when the desire of continued personality is 
extinct, merge into the primal source, " ascend into 
heaven," reach the final stage. Icebergs survive from 
day to day, though gradually changing, as we may 
change in the forms of our manifestation through a 
series of planes or lives ; but they sink at last into the 
element which gave them birth. Rivers survive from 
mile to mile, losing by evaporation, gaining by tribu- 
taries, and continually changing their volume and 
shape ; but they merge in the ocean at last — " even 
the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea." 
Indeed, the well-known hymn recognizes the parallel, 
and uses the figure as an analogy : — 

1 The Cosmopolitan of some unknown date. It reminds one of 
J. Addington Symonds's " sanguine hope " of " resumption into the 
personal-unconscious " ; the " immeasurably precious hope of ending 
with this life the ache and languor of existence " — Biography, by 
H. F. Brown, p. 416. But Symonds was an invalid ; this attitude 
is not the product of health and soundness. My agreement with 
him is probably due to likeness in physical constitution. 

2 Tennyson, The Ring. 



8 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Rivers to the ocean run, 
Nor stay in all their course, 
Fire ascending seeks the sun, 
Both speed them to their source ; 
So a soul that's born of God 
Pants to view His glorious face, 
Upward tends to His abode 
And rests in His embrace. 

The hymn-writer is a little ambiguous — probably 
he rather hesitated at the absorption idea — but the 
unity-thought is there, as indeed it is in a great pro- 
portion of the world's religious literature. The mystic, 
whether Christian, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or Taoist, 
aims at a union with the Divine, a renunciation of his 
own small and unsatisfactory self. The idea is ex- 
pressed by Virgil, in one of his most earnest passages : — 

To God again the enfranchised soul must tend, 
He is her home, her Author is her End ; 
No death is hers ; when earthly eyes grow dim 
Starlike she soars, and Godlike melts in Him. 1 

It is the idea of the Christian hymn just quoted. 
And, indeed, it was taught by that great saint and 
missionary whom we may call the lieutenant of the 
Captain of our salvation, for his doctrine was that in 
Him we live and move and have our being, even now, 
though we fail to realize it. 

But though some such conception may be present 
to the minds of most really religious people, and cer- 
tainly to the minds of all mystics, it is not held by the 
majority of human beings in the West. We Westerners 
are individualists. We are great on Personality. Con- 

1 F. W. H. Myers's translation in Classical Essays, p. 175 (from 
Georgics, iv.) 



IMMORTALITY 9 

sequently, whatever the mystic or Mrs. Stetson may 
say, and however we may agree with them in the com- 
paratively rare moments when we are uncomfortably 
disgusted with ourselves and our activities, we usually 
think of Immortality as a proximate survival of the 
personality past bodily death, not worrying much 
about more ultimate things. But the question is, is 
such survival a fact ? If men die, shall they live 
again, and, if they do, with what body do they come ? 
What is their experience like, in their new state ? 

Some of these questions are now answerable. Not 
answerable in as complete and cut- and- dried a way as 
some would have us believe, for it is certain that any 
description of a spiritual world in materialistic terms 
must be wrong or inadequate ; but answerable at 
least as to the main points. The advance in psychical 
research during the last thirty years enables us, as it 
seems to me, to go as far as that, to say that personal 
survival is a fact, and that something — not everything 
— may be learnt of the surviving spirit's state and 
powers and interests and feelings. 



CHAPTER II 
Investigation : Methods and Examples 



But the task of attaining scientific conviction is not 
easy. Our generation has grown up in a materialistic 
atmosphere, and we do not easily get out of it. We 
run in the old grooves, and a pretty violent jolt is re- 
quired, or long-continued pressure, to lift us up and 
get us free. Consequently it is generally found that 
the reading of books about survival does not prove 
very effective. Even the forty- odd volumes of Pro- 
ceeding'? and Journal of the Society for Psychical 
Research, which are devoted almost exclusively to the 
presentation of actual evidence, may be read without 
any resultant change or gain in belief. The reader 
may be impressed, but he will not be convinced. The 
people he is reading about are unknown to him, and 
they may have made mistakes. Perhaps they strongly 
wished to believe in a future life, and consequently 
were unable to state the case in a quite unprejudiced 
fashion. Other doubts also arise. If the investigators 
are eminent in science, philosophy, or letters, the Jay- 
man reader wonders whether these people of the 
laboratory or the study are the best qualified to detect 
a fraudulent medium ; if, on the other hand, the in- 
vestigator is a shrewd business man, the reader says 
to himself : " Well, this writer has had no scientific 
training : can I safely take him as reliable ? " Then 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES xi 

there are the various difficulties about telepathy and 
the like. Conviction remains unattainable. 

The upshot of this is that personal experience is 
necessary. The seeker must investigate for himself. 
He must not expect to reach another person's point 
of view without laborious travelling. He will have 
to go over the same ground, or similar ground, and 
will have to surmount the same obstacles as that 
other person had to struggle with before him. And 
instead of grumbling at this, he should be thankful 
that at least the direction is indicated, and some sort 
of track made. His task will therefore be a little 
easier than was that of his precursors. The pioneering 
work is done. 

And, this being so, perhaps I overestimate the 
need of personal experience. It was necessary for me, 
but I am of exceptionally sceptical habit of mind, and 
I was steeped in Spencer, Mill, and others of the nega- 
tive school of those days. With the present genera- 
tion it may be different. Certainly I am far from 
wishing that all should become " psychical researchers." 
The investigation is best left to specialists, as in other 
sciences ; and perhaps most people will be able to 
feel that the records already in existence, though not 
furnishing absolutely knockdown proof, are neverthe- 
less sufficient to render the old materialism an improb- 
able hypothesis and to open the door to that belief in 
a spiritual world which is, as Myers said, the preamble 
of all religions. 

Those inquirers who still seek experience of their 
own — and in many, perhaps the majority of cases, this 
desire will be felt — must seek it in the way best adapted 
to their individual circumstances. No doubt the ideal 
thing is to get into touch with some private person who 



12 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

has these peculiar psychic powers of clairvoyance or 
trance ; who, by making the mind quiet and hushing the 
turmoil of the external senses, can perceive in other 
and finer ways, obtaining knowledge not normally pos- 
sessed. Full and careful notes should be taken of all 
that is said by both sensitive and sitter, so that it 
is known how much information, if any, has been 
given away. This is not easy, and needs practice, 
but it can be done. If identity can be hidden, as it 
can when one is introduced to a private circle, so much 
the better. But I repeat that the quest is not suit- 
able for everyone. And good sensitives are rare. 

My own investigations have been mostly along 
these lines, but mainly in the "normal clairvoyance" 
department, there being a good medium not far away 
whom I can see occasionally. The advantages of being 
unknown are here absent, but my friends and I have 
established the fact of this medium's possession of 
supernormal powers by introducing friends from dis- 
tant towns, quite unexpectedly and without giving 
any names. Their deceased relatives and friends have 
in several cases been named and described as fully 
and as correctly as my own. Also it is a common 
thing for very intimate family matters to be referred 
to in my sittings ; matters which the medium could 
not have learnt by any amount of outside inquiry. We 
were sceptical when we began the investigation, ten 
years ago ; we are now fully convinced, all of us, that 
the explanation must be supernormal, and, further, 
that the telepathic hypothesis seems on the whole 
much less rational than the spiritistic. In fact, we 
do not stop at the " hypothesis " stage ; we think 
the case is proved, so far as proof is possible. 

Some of the evidence, obtained mostly in my friends' 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 13 

sittings, has already appeared ; 1 the main purpose 
of the present volume is to present further evidential 
incidents occurring in my own sittings. They will 
at least indicate the kind of evidence that may be 
expected by anyone beginning the investigation. It 
will be observed that a sitting often contains a number 
of apparently unconnected statements, the relation 
and significance of which become apparent only by 
having a series of sittings and carefully collating the 
reports ; hence the importance of contemporaneous 
verbatim notes, which I make in shorthand.. In what 
immediately follows I have sorted out a few main 
strands, omitting those irrelevant to the incidents I 
wish to present. The names are disguised, for obvious 
reasons ; but I trust there is nothing to cause pain, 
even if this volume is read by some relative or friend 
who recognizes the people concerned. These latter 
gave me the evidence — we cannot force it — and I think 
they mean me to publish it in order to spread the 
knowledge of the truth. 



11 

THE " ROBERT PARBERRY LEATHER " SERIES OF 
INCIDENTS 

In a sitting on July 21st, 1914, after giving various 
descriptions of deceased friends and acquaintances, 
some of them relatives, the medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson) 
remarked : 

11 1 get the name Dunlop. A doctor. Medical doctor. 
Old times." 

1 New Evidences in Psychical Research. (Rider, London.) 



14 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

This was mildly interesting, but of no particular 
significance so far as I could see at the moment. A 
Dr. Dunlop formerly lived here in my native town, 
and was well known to my parents. He died over 
forty years ago ; certainly I never knew him. But 
his house was known as Dunlop House until about 
1900, when it was divided into cottages ; and there 
is a faint possibility that Mr. Wilkinson may have 
heard the name, though he lives many miles away, 
and I think it extremely unlikely. The house was 
hidden away among poor property remote from all 
high roads about half a mile from my home, and farther 
away from the railway station than this latter. 

Later in the same sitting the medium said : 

" I get the name Leather. I feel that he would be 
an old man, very gentlemanly, rather retiring. I hesi- 
tate to say the name, for I never heard it before as a name. 
It only means boots, leggings, etc., to me.'''' 

Now it happens that I knew a Mr. Leather very 
well some years ago. He lived three-quarters of a mile 
from my home (where all my sittings have been held), 
and died in 1909. The description is very apt as far 
as it goes. He was eighty-four at death ; was rather 
retiring, and had very much the grand seigneur manner 
— a true gentleman of the old school. I visited him 
occasionally, between 1890 and 1899 ; but I saw most 
of him at Dunlop House in 1893 to 1895, where lived a 
friend of his who was also a friend of mine. A small 
party of us met there for whist nearly every Thursday 
evening in winter. Of that party all are dead or 
long since removed from this part of the country, 
except my sister and myself. Neither of us has ever 
told Mr. Wilkinson anything about this, and I feel 
pretty sure that no one by local inquiry could find 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 15 

any connexion between me and Mr. Leather by way of 
Dunlop House. It is true that no definite connexion 
was alleged in the sitting, but it is a fact that if Mr. 
Leather is still alive" and wishful to prove his identity 
by alluding to shared experiences which the medium 
could hardly know of, he could not do better than 
mention Dunlop House or Dr. Dunlop. 

The next incident occurred a few months later, when 
I received (November 19th, 1914) a letter from Mr. 
Wilkinson, who happened to be at Bournemouth, 
whither a letter of mine, asking him to come over, had 
followed him. After answering this and describing his 
journey ings, he said : 

" By the way, did you ever know someone named 
Parrbury or some such name ? I am impressed it would 
be a very old gentleman you might have known ; however, 
I get the feeling while I am holding your letter. He was 
a man who retained his faculties in a large measure till 
the end of life almost. I am not sure but I feel perhaps 
he was called Robert, but of that I could not be too sure ; 
the other name, however, being so uncommon that I thought 
I would tell it to you. He evidently is keenly interested 
in you." 

On reading this I thought it was meaningless. But 
when I told my sister about it, she said that Robert 
Parrbury, or Parberry — spelling uncertain — was Mr. 
Leather's Christian name. Then I remembered that 
Robert was certainly right, but the other name was 
unfamiliar ; Mr. Leather's friends never used it, nor 
did I remember ever having known it, though I may 
have known and forgotten. On inquiry I found that 
his full name was Robert Parberry Leather. He re- 
tained his faculties until near the end, as stated ; re- 
maining, indeed, particularly young and alert in mind 



16 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

up to the time of his fatal paralytic seizure, after which 
he died in a few hours, never regaining consciousness. 

I wrote to Mr. Wilkinson saying that the name 
" Robert Parrbury " had interesting significance, and 
that I should like him to come over for a sitting as 
soon as possible. I gave him no further information. 

On December 14th, 1914, he came for a sitting, and 
I said in preliminary conversation that the Parrbury of 
his letter had meaning ; whereupon he remarked that 
when writing the letter he had felt that the gentleman 
in question was waiting for some old friend to pass 
over. This, as it happens, was curiously true. At 
the time of that letter's being written, Mr. Leather's 
brother-in-law and most intimate friend was dying, 
not far from Mr. Leather's old home, and three hun- 
dred miles from where Mr. Wilkinson then was. Pre- 
sumably space is less of an obstacle to those " over 
there," and, while waiting about in the old earth- 
regions or conditions generally, Mr. Leather could give 
his message to the medium at Bournemouth as easily 
as if the latter had been here, nearer the dying friend. 
I told Mr. Wilkinson, in reply to his remark, that it 
was quite correct, an old friend of Mr. Leather's having 
died, after gradually sinking for many months, on 
November 29th, 1914 — eleven days after the writing of 
the letter. A fairly good sitting followed, with a con- 
siderable amount of matter about various deceased 
friends and relatives of mine whom I am sure the 
medium had never known ; but there was no sign or 
mention of Mr. Leather. So I concluded that, the 
two friends having been reunited, they had now gone 
forward together. 

This incident seemed to me to have an eminently 
pleasant and consoling significance. The intimacy of 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 17 

these two men had been quite exceptionally close and 
unbroken over a period of about fifty years. They 
were, as I have said, brothers-in-law and neighbours ; 
alike in tastes and temperament ; both became widowers 
very early in life, and they spent much time together. 
I am quite sure that, assuming survival, the person 
whom Mr. Drayton (the second to die of the two friends) 
would most wish to meet him would be his old chum, 
Mr. Leather. 

At the end of this sitting I asked the medium if 
he had ever been in Knowlston Cemetery. (That is 
where the bodies of the two men are buried.) He 
replied that he had never heard the name before, and 
had never been in any cemetery in this neighbourhood 
at all. Having fully satisfied myself of Mr. Wilkinson's 
genuine supernormal faculty through earlier evidence 
already mentioned, I have long since rejected the idea 
of wilful deception ; but I thought it just possible that 
he might have been in that particular graveyard, and 
might have seen and forgotten the names, for we must 
assume that " forgotten " things are still subliminally 
remembered. I entirely accept his statement that he 
has never been there. Moreover, it is a private ceme- 
tery, belonging to a Nonconformist Chapel ; and the 
grave of Mr. Leather — about whom I was mainly con- 
cerned because of the medium's getting the little-known 
second name — is hidden away in a remote part, far 
from the path. The tombstone inscription cannot be 
read without going close up to it, threading about 
among many other graves. 

But this was not the end of it. At my next sitting, 
on January 15th, 1915, after evidential statements 
about someone else, the medium said : 

" There is a man by that bookcase " (pointing), " a 
c 



18 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

very old man, big, full-featured. Been gone some time ; 
old-fashioned shirt, white, very clean. Elias Sidney.'" 
[Medium took pencil and paper and wrote " Elias 
Sidney."] " Politics interested him ; rather a strong 
politician — Radical or strong Liberal. Been dead some 
time. Somebody brought him, somebody on the other side, 
who has manifested here before. Not lived here. Good 
colour in his face. There is somebody behind him, and 
he shadows him. Had to do with Liberals. Rather 
heavy on his feet." 

All this was quite meaningless to me. I had never 
heard of any Elias Sidney. Then came various deceased 
relatives and acquaintances of mine, one of them a 
very unexpected person whom I had known in youth 
(he died about 1890) but had not thought of for years. 
His name was given as Moses Young ; I was quite 
without recollection of the man's Christian name, but 
on inquiry it turned out to be Moses. Then : 

" Sidney appears again. Somebody brought him ; 
some spirit" 

Still unrecognized. Other spirits came, and inter- 
spersed in their descriptions were ejaculatory sen- 
tences like : " Sidney comes and goes ; enthusiast at 
politics." " Sidney got excited when discussing politics," 
and the like. Apparently the medium received these 
impressions from the spirit who had brought Sidney, 
and who was describing his mental characteristics for 
the purposes of identification and proof. But I could 
think of no Elias Sidney or of anyone likely to bring 
such a man. Finally the medium said, just after 
giving some other evidential matter : 

" You remember me seeing an old man here before ? 
I canH remember his name." 

Noticing that he seemed excited and eager, as if 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 19 

something important were coming, I said, " Yes ; Mr. 
Leather perhaps." 

" Yes, Leather. It is Mr. Leather who has brought 
Elias Sidney. They were cronies. [Medium laughs.] 
They were cronies. Sidney has been passed away longer 
than Mr. Leather." 

Further evidential matter was given about other 
people, but no more about Mr. Sidney or Mr. Leather. 
However, the last statement having given me an idea 
of where to seek, I inquired of several prominent local 
Liberals who had known Mr. Leather as to whether 
they had ever heard of a man named Elias Sidney. 
None of them had ; and I began to think the medium 
was quite off the mark. But it happened that one of 
them knew an old gentleman who lives a few miles 
away and who has had a very extensive acquaintance 
with political men, and to him he addressed the same 
question. " Certainly," was the immediate reply ; "I 
knew Elias Sidney very well indeed. He died eight 
or nine years ago, but had long been retired from public 
life, being a very old man. He was one of a coterie of 
friends, all vigorous Liberals. I was one. Mr. Leather 
was another." 

I then made further inquiries, finding that Mr. 
Sidney died in January, 1909, seven weeks before 
Mr. Leather's death. Mr. Sidney's age was eighty- 
three. I found and interviewed a man who had known 
him — not my first informant — and it turned out that 
he was a keen politician on the Liberal side, and very 
excitable in political argument. He went to the same 
club as Mr. Leather, daily, as long as health allowed. 
The description of his personal appearance is accurate. 
I have seen a photograph of him, which bears out 
my informant's opinion. 



20 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

This incident does not seem to me satisfactorily 
explainable by any reading of my mind, either in its 
normal conscious levels or in those subliminal levels 
where forgotten things are supposed still to exist. For 
I asked a number of friends who had been in closer 
touch with Mr. Leather and with local politics than 
I have been, and not one of them remembered ever 
hearing the name of Elias Sidney. I am therefore 
sure that he must have lived a very retired life for at 
least twenty years before his death ; and, indeed, he 
does not seem to have ever been a prominent man. 
(The fact that many of Mr. Leather's friends had never 
heard of Mr. Sidney is due to the two friends' meeting 
at the club and not visiting at each other's homes, 
which were several miles apart.) 

These considerations, I think, justify the provisional 
conclusion that neither telepathy from my mind nor 
accidentally possessed knowledge on the part of the 
medium — who lives in another town twelve miles 
away — is a satisfactory explanation of the incident. 
There remain two alternatives ; deliberate concocting 
of evidence, necessitating much inquiry and travelling, 
and the spiritistic theory according to which the 
messages came from the surviving mind of Mr. Leather, 
or Mr. Sidney, or both. And I have already said that 
I entirely reject the idea of fraud ; not only because, 
in ten years' acquaintance with Wilkinson, my friends 
and I have found nothing at variance with the most 
complete integrity and veracity, but also because his 
mediumship has given us a large mass of evidence 
which no amount of detective work could obtain. 

I have ruled out, then, normally acquired know- 
ledge on the medium's part, telepathy from my mind, 
and fraud. Telepathy from distant living people un- 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 21 

known to the medium I regard as a mere guess and 
a rather absurd one. There remains the spiritistic 
interpretation, and this I provisionally accept as the 
most rational. 

Nothing more was heard of Elias Sidney, but at a 
sitting of January 19th, 1916, Mr. Leather again pur- 
ported to be present, this time bringing his friend, 
Mr. Drayton, whom he had come to meet when the 
latter was dying in November, 1914. The following is 
what was said. It occurs among evidential matter 
relating to other people. I abstract it from my verbatim 
shorthand notes : 

" Have you a friend called Drayton ? " [J. A. H. : 
" I know some Draytons."] ..." There is a very 
old man — he has a job to stand up. Tottering with age" 
[On first coming back into earth conditions, a spirit 
frequently shows itself in the bodily state which existed 
just before its departure ; partly perhaps for identifica- 
tion's sake, but partly no doubt spontaneously, some- 
what as we tend to revert to the manner and speech 
and subjects of old times when revisiting the home 
of our childhood.] " There are two old men together. 
Little, bent with age, white front ; another little old man 
with him. Brothers or friends. Henry and Robert. 
Don't know whether they were brothers or not. Henry is 
older than the other. They knew each other very well. 
Robert's face is smoother, not so lined. They are chums 
— perhaps brothers. Robert pre- deceased the other. I 
don't think Henry has been long gone. Somebody called 
Whitley is connected with Henry ; lives a long way from 
here. A woman ; not well ; belongs to Henry. She is 
called Whitley. She has something belonging to the old 
man. He liked his own way ; a bit dogmatic. Robert 
was rather milder. Henry had a lot of his own way. 



22 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

He is very much surprised about things now. . . . Robert 
was a bit younger ; nice old man ; jolly. They had lots 
in common, though there was great difference. Perhaps 
difference in position. They're alike now in that respect." 
Mr. Drayton's name was Henry. He died Novem- 
ber 29th, 1914, aged 89. Robert P. Leather died at 
84, in 1909, so he " pre-deceased the other," and was 
" a bit younger." The characterization of both is 
strikingly correct. The hesitation as to whether they 
were brothers or unrelated friends is very noteworthy, 
for, as already said, they were brothers-in-law and 
great friends. Mr. Drayton has a living daughter 
named Whitley (married name), and I afterwards 
heard that she had not been well. She lives '•' a long 
way from here " a good part of the year, though she 
is often at a house about twelve miles from where the 
medium lives, in another town. I have no reason to 
believe that he knew she was Mr. Drayton's daughter, 
even if he knew of her existence. It is also noteworthy 
that of several daughters she is the only one connected 
with our family, her husband's uncle having married 
my great- aunt. If Mr. Drayton was really present 
he would naturally think of her, rather than of his 
other daughters, in connection with me. 

After other matter the following came, in bits : 
" Henry had a portrait of old Mr. Gladstone, the 
statesman. I think he must have had one in his house." 
[Probably. He was a vigorous Gladstonian, and had 
been M.P. during one of Gladstone's Premierships.] 
" Robert has brought him. I think Henry has not mani- 
fested here before. . . . I saw those two old men so 
clearly that I could recognize their portraits if I saw 
them. Shall not remember them long — shall have forgotten 
them to-morrow." 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 23 

The next connected incident occurred on August 2nd, 
1916. At this sitting, after some excellent evidence con- 
cerning distant relatives of mine, the following was said : 

" There is some man here who might have been a 
schoolmaster ; there is something over his shoulders like 
a gown. A scholar. Middle-aged ; about sixty, rather 
tall. Did you ever know somebody called Waldron — 
W-A-L-D-R-O-N ? [Yes.] Thomas Waldron. I think 
it is Waldron. Probably this man had been a professor 
or schoolmaster. He has a lot of books with him. He 
is ' well up.' A classical man, good at Latin. He is 
just by that bookcase. He has been deceased about twelve 
years, I should think ; probably more. [All that is very 
good.] This man was very fond of boys — teaching boys. 
He ivas a bit Churchy. I should not think he was a Dis- 
senter — more Churchy. The letters on those big books are 
red and black. I can see they are Latin. He has a big 
book with H-O-M-E-B on it. Would that be the name 
of the writer, perhaps ? [Very likely.] Big leather 
binding. . . . The man would be about sixty when he 
died, and he was not ill long. . . . This man has been 
gone longer than I said. He is telling me something. 
How long did I say ? [Twelve years.] It is longer 
than thaW 

The facts are that Mr. Thomas Waldron was head- 
master of the school I was at from 1878 to 1886. He 
was a classical man, good at Latin, which was his 
pet subject. He wore a gown in school. He was a 
Churchman, and two years before his death he took 
Orders. He died of cerebral haemorrhage, without being 
ill at all, in 1898, aged between fifty-nine and sixty. 
As a schoolboy I was keenly interested in the Iliad, 
and probably he knew that ; but I am not aware that 
he himself read Homer much. 



24 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Later in the sitting Wilkinson said : 

" You remember me speaking about Thomas Waldron ? 
There is some woman connected with this man : she is 
in the body, about seventy years of age. You may hear 
of her soon. Some circumstances linked wp with this 
man." 

His widow, who left this district three years after 
his death, is still living, in a town about forty miles 
away. No relatives remain about here. The medium 
continued : 

" You remember me seeing an old man here a time 
or two ? A man with a funny name. [Leather, per- 
haps ?] 1 hafs it. He is here. He has a lady with 
him : very young, beside him. Quite youthful. I know 
the man's face well ; I have seen him before. The lady 
is about your age. [To my sister.] 2 hey are together. 
Her name was Sarah. She might be some relation to the 
man." 

Mr. Leather's wife was named Sarah. She died in 
1866, aged thirty-eight. I did not know the name 
until I had the tombstone examined. It is in an almost 
inaccessible part of a private cemetery, as already said. 

With regard to Mr. Waldron, it is noteworthy that 
he was one of the small party that met every Thursday 
evening at Dunlop House, twenty or more years ago. 
He and Mr. Leather were close friends. 

That is the end, up to the present, of this particular 
series of incidents. I have no further comment to 
make except to draw attention to one curious feature. 
In the sitting of July 21st, 1914, the name Leather 
was given, without Christian names. In the impressions 
communicated to me by letter in the following Novem- 
ber, the names Parrbury and a doubtful Robert were 
given, but nothing else ; and I afterwards ascertained 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 25 

that Mr. Wilkinson thought it was a Robert Parrbury, 
and did not associate the names with Mr. Leather. 
Finally, in the sitting of January 19th, 1916, the 
name Robert was used throughout, with no use of 
Parberry or Leather ; and I found that the medium 
did not associate the Robert of this sitting with the 
Mr. Leather of previous ones or with the Parrbury 
of his Bournemouth impressions. It would seem that 
Mr. Leather purposely gave different parts of his 
name on the different occasions, in order to keep the 
medium in the dark and to improve the evidence, 
knowing that I should piece them together and re- 
cognize the same person behind the communications, 
although the medium was thinking that several different 
people were concerned. 

In all such incidents as these, the thing first to be 
settled is the extent of the medium's normal know- 
ledge. Before proceeding to any supernormal hypo- 
theses, even of telepathy, we must be driven to admit 
that normal knowledge cannot reasonably be sug- 
gested as a sufficient explanation. Now I cannot pass 
on to another person my own certitude or my own 
state of mind regarding the extent of Mr. Wilkinson's 
normal knowledge. My opinion is the result of multi- 
tudinous small factors — inferences as to his general 
mode of life, the people he meets, where he goes, what 
he reads, and the like — and I cannot produce them 
all here. The mere statement of my opinion must 
therefore suffice, and readers will accept it or not, 
according as they think well or ill of my general 
reliability. My opinion, then, is : 

1. That Wilkinson had no conscious knowledge of 
Mr. Drayton, Mr. Leather, Mr. Waldron, or Mr. 
Sidney. 



26 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

2. That he may have heard of, or read of, Mr. 
Drayton, whose name would appear in subscription 
lists to charities, etc., but that, if so, the knowledge 
will have been forgotten, for Mr. Drayton's activities 
and tastes would have no special interest for Wilkin- 
son. Moreover, Mr. Drayton had been confined to 
his house for many years by the infirmities of age, and 
he had been out of public life for twenty-five years. 
I think it extremely unlikely — not quite incredible, but 
extremely unlikely — that Wilkinson knows, even sub- 
liminally, as much about Mr. Drayton as the sittings 
produced. 

8. That Wilkinson is still less likely to have heard 
even the names of Mr. Leather and Mr. Waldron, or 
to have known anything about them. I do not believe 
that he had ever heard of Elias Sidney, or of Dunlop 
House, or Dr, Dunlop ; and, even if he had, I should not 
be able to believe that he could have known of the 
significance of Dunlop House to Mr. Leather, Mr. 
Waldron, and myself, or that he could have had any 
notion of the club friendship and personal character- 
istics of Mr. Leather and Mr, Sidney. In short, basing 
my opinion on careful consideration of many data, 
I unhesitatingly reject the suggestion that the medium's 
normally acquired knowledge, supraliminal or sub- 
liminal, is sufficient to account for the facts of the 
sittings. To me, the only satisfactory explanation is 
the spiritistic one. I believe that Mr. Leather has 
been supervising from the other side, bringing various 
kinds of evidence of his survival and continued interest ; 
and in particular the Elias Sidney episode seems to me 
a strikingly ingenious and successful attempt to get 
round the " telepathic hypothesis," which some in- 
vestigators, without much basis of fact, are apt to 



METHODS AND EXAMPLES 27 

apply to all incidents in which the sitter is in possession 
of the knowledge shown. 

Finally, I may remark that Mr. Leather in life took 
a very kindly and rather special interest in me, and 
after my schooldays I saw more of him than of Mr. 
Waldron. With Mr. Drayton my personal acquaint- 
ance was slight. If he had been represented as appear- 
ing first and bringing Mr. Leather, or if he had been 
represented as bringing Mr. Waldron, it would have 
been all wrong. As it was, everything was exactly 
in keeping with the actual degree of my acquaintance 
with the three men, and in keeping with their own 
inter-relations. 



CHAPTER III 
Further "Meeting" Gases 

There seems very good reason to believe that all 
dying people are met and helped over by friends or 
relatives on the other side, as in the case of Mr. Leather 
and Mr. Drayton just described. The following inci- 
dents support the idea, though they are less extensive 
in their details. 

In a sitting on December 14th, 1914, Wilkinson 
suddenly said, amid other matter : 

" Have you known somebody called Walker ? . . . 
At some time or other you had acquaintances called 
Walker:' 

He seemed, however, uncertain about the last 
syllable, so in order to help I suggested that it might 
be Walkley. He agreed, saying that he had never 
heard the name before, but had known some Walkers. 
This " helping " on my part may be seized on by 
sceptics, and indeed it is unwise to do much of it, for 
if we give away information we are spoiling our chances 
of getting evidence. But it sometimes happens, par- 
ticularly if the medium is half right and apparently 
rather puzzled, that a little guidance leads to a further 
rush of evidential matter, without much real informa- 
tion having been conveyed ; and so long as everything 
" given away " is carefully noted down, there is no 
danger of the guidance vitiating the evidence, for 
we can make our own estimate of the amount to be 

28 



FURTHER "MEETING" GASES 29 

allowed as discount, so to speak, on any true matter 
that may follow. In this case, however, my hint 
seemed useless. Nothing further came, though I ex- 
pected something ; for I had known some Walkleys 
very well between 1883 and 1900, and I immediately 
thought of them when the medium said " Walker." 

The next relevant incident occurred ten months 
later. In a letter dated " Bournemouth, October 1st, 
1915," Wilkinson said : 

" Just when closing this epistle I felt as if some old 
man touched me, rather a gentleman, and he made me 
feel a bit like a parson. I cannot get any communication 
from him beyond ' A. S. W.,' whatever that means ; an 
impression I get is that you might have known this man 
some years ago" 

The facts are that Mr. Walkley was a minister, that 
he was certainly a gentleman (more markedly so than 
the average village Nonconformist minister of those 
days), and that his full initials were A. S. W. I told 
the medium nothing except that what he had written 
was correct for someone I had known. 

At my next sitting there was no mention of the 
Walkleys, but at a later one, on February 17th, 1916, 
the medium said, after other evidential matter : 

" You may hear of a funeral of somebody soon : I 
see a funeral party. A woman who will die soon : it is 
nearly up to you. Somebody old. There is a man here 
with a round soft hat, a felt hat, like a parson's : grey : 
been a parson. He is about here waiting for somebody. 
. . . That old woman will die soon. [Here I remarked : 
"She is dead already."] Indeed? It is somebody very 
old and feeble — over eighty ; been going gradually." 

Our friends the Walkleys left this district in August, 
1900. Mr. Walkley, minister at the chapel I attended 



30 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

during his seventeen years' pastorate, died three months 
later (November 16th). He usually wore a clerical 
round soft felt hat, though occasionally a tall silk one ; 
and he had grey hair and beard. His widow afterwards 
lived mostly in London, but was sometimes in these 
parts (West Riding of Yorkshire), staying with rela- 
tives. Two days before this sitting — i.e. on February 
15th — she had died there, at the ege of eighty- two, 
after sinking gradually. The funeral was fixed for the 
18th — i.e. the day after the sitting. Apparently her 
husband had come to meet her, and was still in these 
regions although she was now dead ; the reason no 
doubt being that the " departed " spirit often does 
not depart at once to supernal realms, but lingers about 
with those it loves, or is perhaps occupied for some 
little time in withdrawing from its old associations 
before setting its face to further progress in the larger 
life. 

As to the possibility of the medium's possessing 
normal knowledge of her death or her connexion with 
us, or indeed of her existence, I think it is in the last 
degree unlikely. She was known to very few people ; 
her relatives are in no way prominent, and she died at 
a place about ten miles from Wilkinson's home, in 
another town. She had no friends in his neighbour- 
hood, and I think it practically certain that he knows 
no one who knew her or her people, except myself ; 
and I had certainly never told him anything about 
either her or them. 

In this same sitting of February 17th, 1916, after 
some very evidential things relating to my father, the 
medium said : 

" This big man with the full face [my father] must 
have known a man named Charlton, a younger man. 



FURTHER "MEETING" GASES 31 

This man is just waking up. He didn't quite believe he 
was dead. I feel that he would be an impulsive man. 
He would swear when things went wrong. Hot-headed. 
Middle life. A proud man. He has been wandering 
about a while. Been gone some time. 

" His influence is very authoritative. Almost an 
arrogant man in some ways. There's somebody in the 
body that he wants to approach — a woman. His object 
is to reach her. 

" He had money. He has not manifested here before. 
He was one who would rush through fire and water to get 
at what he wanted. [After interluded matter relating 
to other people, he continued :] That Charlton's in- 
fluence won't leave me. He knew somebody called William. 
It is a bit fragmentary, but they did not just agree about 
something. There is a divergence of opinion. Whether 
it is religion, I don't know. He has a big thick stick, not a 
walking-stick — it is too thick. He has a very light- 
coloured suit on — kind of sporting outfit. He is a new 
influence ; not manifested here before. Very impulsive." 

All this is very true and characteristic of a Mr. 
Charlton whom I knew slightly, except as regards the 
stick ; I think he fished, and it may be a jointed rod, 
but I am not sure. All the other details are exactly 
true. He was better known to a relative of mine 
named William than to me, and they were of different 
opinions in religion and politics, though my relative 
tells me that they never discussed either, and that 
he liked Mr. Charlton and got on excellently with him, 
in chats in tram or train mostly. But they lived not 
far away from each other, and were aware enough of 
each other's views in a general way. 

It is curious that Mr. Charlton was said to be only 
just waking up (from the recuperative sleep which 




32 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

seems to follow death), for he died a few years ago. 
The post-mortem sleep or rest is usually an affair of 
months or even of days or hours ; rarely of years, 
though it is occasionally so — e.g. in some of the Piper 
cases. The remark that he " didn't quite believe he 
was dead " is noteworthy. It is often said that when 
people wake up on the other side they can hardly 
believe that they have died, their surroundings seem 
so natural and they feel so well ; but in Mr. Charlton's 
case there is a special significance. He died of a much- 
dreaded disease, the nature of which is often kept 
from the patient's knowledge, and in which anodynes 
are mercifully used towards the end. It is quite likely 
that in such cases the sufferer does not realize that 
he is dying ; and afterwards, having made the crossing 
so easily and so unconsciously, he may indeed " hardly 
believe that he is dead." The naturalness of the proxi- 
mate post-mortem life is often emphasized by Sweden- 
borg : " The first state of man after death is like his 
state in the world, because his life is still external. 
He has therefore a similar face, speech, and disposition, 
thus a similar moral and civil life ; so that he thinks 
that he is still in the world, unless he pays close at- 
tention to the experiences he meets with, or remembers 
what was said to him by the angels when he was raised 
up. Thus life remains the same in the other world 
as in this, and death is only the transition from one 
to the other." {Heaven and Hell, § 493, p. 266, " Every- 
man " edition.) 

I have quoted this as a " meeting " case, with less 
justification than in the preceding ones. But the 
surmise is suggested by the fact that Mr. Charlton's 
brother was dying at the time of the sitting, though 
I did not know it. He died on March 6th. I did not 



FURTHER "MEETING" GASES 33 

know him, even by sight, and I did not know of his 
illness until I saw his death announced in the news- 
papers. It seems likely that Mr. Charlton had come 
to meet his brother, as Mr. Leather came to meet Mr. 
Drayton, and as Mr. Walkley came to meet his widow. 
And we must remember that this " meeting " idea 
is not by any means based solely on mediumistic com- 
munications. There is a very considerable body of 
evidence of another kind. Dying people often see spirit 
friends who have come to meet them. The sceptic will, 
of course, say that hallucinations are common enough 
in illness, and that a dying person's statements are not 
evidence of the objectivity, in any sense, of what he 
sees. But wait a moment ! The matter is not to be 
settled as easily as that. If a man, who has never 
had an hallucination in his life and whose mind in all 
other respects seems quite clear, informs us quietly 
when dying that he sees his father and sister — which 
latter died when a child, forty years before, and has 
consequently been hardly ever in his thoughts — it is 
mere unscientific dogmatism to say that this is sub- 
jective hallucination. How do you know it is ? It 
may be, of course ; but there is no basis for an assertion 
that it is. The man has never had such a vision before. 
Why does he have one now ? Effects must have causes. 
And if the materialist ventures to say that the cause is 
a hypothetical and hypothetically adequate physio- 
logical change, we must ask him to be much more 
definite than that. He must prove his point. We 
cannot accept it on faith. Moreover, there is a re- 
cognizable difference in kind between psychical and 
visceral hallucinations. In great weakness and with a 
temperature of 104*5°, I have had incipient hallucinations 
myself, which I noted down as soon as I could hold a 

D 



34 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

pencil, 1 and they never took the shape of my deceased 
relatives. They were merely grotesque and dream-like. 

But the argument can be carried further. Admit- 
ting that a dying person is likely to think about those 
who have gone before, and that this thinking may 
initiate hallucination, we will grant that experiences 
of this type must not be considered strictly evidential. 
But there is one kind of deathbed vision that is ; namely, 
when the dying person sees a vision of someone whom 
he does not know to be dead. Such cases are, inevitably, 
rare. Miss Frances Power Cobbe made a collection of 
them in her Peak in Darien volume, and there are 
several in the publications of the Society for Psychical 
Research. The following may be given as brief resumes. 

Mrs. Y., wife of Colonel Y., when dying, told her 
husband that several times during the day she had 
heard voices singing, and that she thought it was the 
angels welcoming her to heaven ; but "it is strange, 
there is one voice amongst them I am sure I know, 
and cannot remember whose voice it is." Suddenly 
she stopped, and, pointing over her husband's head, 
said : " Why, there she is, in the corner of the room ; 
it is Julia X. ; she is coming on ; she is leaning over 
you ; she has her hands up ; she is praying — do look ; 
she is going." Colonel Y. looked but could see nothing, 
and thought it was only the imagination of a sick 
person; though, indeed, Mrs. Y. in all other respects 
was in full possession of all her faculties. Two days 
afterwards Colonel Y. heard that Julia X. — a young 
woman with a beautiful singing voice whom they had 

1 Journal, Society for Psychical Research, vol. xvi., p. 235 and 
following. In Proceedings, vol. xix., p. 267, Mr. Piddington analyses 
a number of hallucinations of visceral type, comparing them with 
the psychical. 



FURTHER "MEETING" CASES 35 

known some years before — had died about a week 
before Mrs. Y. It is certain that the latter had no 
normal knowledge of that fact. 1 

Another excellent case is recorded by Dr. Minot J. 
Savage in his Psychic Facts and Theories, Two little 
girls, schoolmates and intimate friends, aged about 
eight, fell ill of diphtheria. At noon on a Wednesday 
Jennie died ; but the doctor and parents of Edith were 
careful to keep from her the knowledge that her play- 
mate was gone, fearing the effect on her of such a 
shock. That they were successful is proved by the 
fact that on the following Saturday, just before Edith 
became unconscious, she selected two of her photo- 
graphs to be sent to Jennie. On the evening of that 
same day, at half-past six, Edith died. She became 
conscious just before, talked about dying, and showed 
no fear. Then she appeared to see one and another 
of the friends she knew were dead. But suddenly, and 
with every appearance of surprise, she exclaimed : 
' Why, papa, I am going to take Jennie with me. . . . 
You did not tell me Jennie was here." And she reached 
out her arms as in welcome, saying : " O Jennie, I'm 
so glad you are here." 

We are not given the firsthand accounts of the 
parents in this case, and consequently the evidence is 
less strong ; but Dr. Savage was an experienced in- 
vestigator, and he knew the people concerned. They 
wished their names to be withheld from the public, 
but full information in proof of bona fides was given 
to Dr. Hyslop, the Secretary of the American S.P.R. 2 

In what has just been said we have been dealing, 
on the one hand, with mediumistic communications in 

1 Proceedings, vol. iii., p. 92. Human Personality, vol. ii., p. 339. 

2 Journal, American S.P.R., July, 1907, p. 50 and following. 



36 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

which a spirit was said to be waiting about for a dying 
friend, and, on the other, with the dying person's vision 
of the spirit who is waiting. It would be exceedingly 
interesting if we could get these two kinds of evidence 
in combination ; for example, if I could learn that Mr. 
Drayton, during the last week or two of his life, saw 
his friend Mr. Leather and realized that he had come 
to meet him. This would have corroborated my 
mediumistic messages. But it is hardly to be expected 
that such corroboration will often be obtainable, for 
any such experiences of dying people are not talked 
about by surviving relatives except to intimate friends. 
However, there is one case, not precisely of the kind 
required — for the dying person knew that the welcoming 
spirit was " dead " — but possessing such important 
evidential features of a similar kind, reported by the 
experienced and critical Dr. Richard Hodgson, that it 
may suitably be quoted here. 

Some hours after the death of a man named F., 
Dr. Hodgson had a sitting with Mrs. Piper. A Mme. 
Elisa (known in life to Dr. Hodgson) communicated, 
saying that F. (whom she had known) was there with 
her, and that she had met and helped him as he was 
dying. She repeated what she said to him, " an un- 
usual form of expression " (says Dr. Hodgson), and 
indicated that he had heard and recognized her. Later, 
Dr. Hodgson learnt that F.. when dying, had said that 
he saw Mme. Elisa, who was speaking to him. He 
repeated to his nearest surviving relative, who was with 
him, what Mme. Elisa was saying ; and the expression 
so repeated was the same as the one that Dr. Hodgson 
had received from Mme. Elisa through Mrs. Piper. 1 

It is desirable, as such narratives indicate, that 
1 Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xiii., p. 378. 



FURTHER "MEETING" GASES 37 

more serious notice should be taken of anything that 
a dying person may say than has hitherto been the 
rule ; particularly when there has been no sign of 
any impairment of mental faculty. To many good 
people there is no doubt something of irreverence in 
this, and the idea is repellent. But though this is 
natural, it is seen on reflection to be a mistaken idea. 
Death is admittedly a solemn event, but so is birth — 
which is a time of rejoicing ; and so is every change 
in life ; even a removal from one house to another ; 
still more the emigration of a relative to the Colonies. 
There is an irrevocable break with the past, and a 
separation. All such events are to be treated seriously ; 
but there is no irreverence in trying to understand 
them to the full, and in noting down all circumstances 
for later consideration, particularly if it is recognized 
that such observation and record may furnish data 
which will strongly support the highest religious con- 
ceptions, rendering the old hopeless materialism entirely 
unscientific and irrational. We may be very sure that 
the departed one — who has not really departed except 
from the field of our limited sense-perceptions — will be 
glad if in even his last helpless moments he has still 
succeeded in being useful ; and if he has said some- 
thing potentially evidential but which his friends 
neglected to note, from mistaken ideas of " rever- 
ence," it will be for their negligence, which is an irrever- 
ence done to Truth, that he may blame them. 

On this point of regarding the end of our present 
phase with a more depressed solemnity than is neces- 
sary, we may well remember the curious and indeed 
startling words of Sir Thomas More : 

" They " (the Utopians) " think that . . . nothing 
can be more pleasant and acceptable to the dead " 



38 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

than " the rehearsing of his virtuous manners and his 
good deeds." ..." But no part of his life is so oft 
or gladly talked of as his merry death." 

And Sir Thomas met his own death, as history tells, 
entirely in that spirit ; not with any bravado or forced 
gaiety, but with a genuine cheerfulness and mirth, not 
only when he joked on the scaffold, but also before, when 
he watched the equal jollity of Latimer in the courtyard. 1 

But if this is above the power of most of us, we can 
still attain to the similar if milder view of our own 
Tennyson, whose wisdom sings : 

I hate the black negation of the bier, 
And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves 
And higher, having climb'd one step beyond 
Our village miseries, might be borne in white 
To burial or to burning, hymn'd from hence 
With songs in praise of death, and crown' d with flowers. 

■ — The Ancient Sage. 

On this subject of reverence in regard to the whole 
question, I have noticed that those who come fresh 
to the subject are sometimes slightly shocked by the 
matter-of-fact and everyday tone in which we speak 
of the other side and those who are there. It has been 
customary to regard spirits and the idea of them with 
awe and fear, instead of with friendliness and love ; 2 
and to talk of them familiarly seems almost flippant. 
I have heard people say, " I hope I shall never see 
anything," " I should be frightened if my mother 
communicated," and the like. " Frightened " of one's 
mother ! What must that mother's feelings be when 
she sees her child turn away from the thought of her, 

1 Green's Short History of the English People, pp. 344, 345. 
a Cf. Lanoe Falconer's fine book, Cecilia de Noel, for an exemplifi- 
cation of the right attitude. 



FURTHER " MEETING" CASES 39 

in fear ? Must it not cause her pain, so far as pain 
is experienced there ? Even indifference and the 
thought of them as " dead " must be unpleasant to 
them ; so, also, is excessive grief. 

There is nothing reverent or praiseworthy in such 
attitudes. Is it not more sensible, now that we have 
definite scientific assurance of their continued life, to 
think of them often, cheerfully, and with loving thoughts, 
which, they assure us, greatly help them in their progress, 
as we are helped by love while here ? Thinking of them 
thus, as alive and human still, though with " spiritual " 
bodies (1 Cor. xv., verse 44), instead of fleshly ones, 
we commit no irreverence. Reverence is due to noble 
character, both in and out of the body ; but the mere 
fact of a man's being dead does not call for any funda- 
mental change in our feelings about him. He is still 
a human being ; he has progressed one stage beyond 
our village miseries, and is therefore to be con- 
gratulated and mildly envied; but the amount of our 
reverence is to be decided by our idea of his spiritual 
excellence, not by the fact that he is dead. 

There are many grades of progress on all the planes, 
and there are men alive now who are more worthy of 
reverence than many who are dead ; though death, 
no doubt, is " promotion " for everybody — in propor- 
tion as we have tried to walk in accordance with what 
light we had — and a great and holy and loving man 
here will be a greater and holier and more loving man 
there, for he will have more scope for the exercise of 
his faculties, after dropping the fleshly vesture " which 
doth so grossly close us in." But we reverenced him 
while here also. All is continuity and gradation ; the 
gulf of death is not a gulf ; it is only a thin veil ; and 
man remains himself after passing through. 



CHAPTER IV 
Other Incidents 

In most sittings with mediums, the sitters are people 
who have been recently bereaved and who are seeking 
communications from someone who has crossed over ; 
and it is perhaps under these conditions that the best 
results are obtained. For, whatever the explanation, 
I think that all investigators are agreed on the fact 
that a strong emotional link between a sitter and 
someone on the other side is found to conduce to 
successfully evidential messages. The fact itself, though 
to many minds — as to my own — suggestive of the 
genuineness of the ostensible communicator, who, if 
still existent and retaining the loves of earth, will 
certainly wish to communicate, nevertheless does not 
prove any particular explanation. It is reasonable on 
the hypothesis of the phenomena being what they 
claim to be ; but it is also reasonable, more or less, on 
the hypothesis of telepathy, though I shall argue later 
that telepathy is a doubtfully applicable " explanation " 
when this supposititious mind-reading is meant. We 
may admit, then, that this fact of the emotional link's 
giving good conditions does not count greatly in favour 
of the spiritistic theory, though in my opinion it does 
so count to some extent. 

But, what is more important to the scientific con- 
sideration of these things, the fact of such an emo- 
tional link is itself sufficient to cause a certain distrust 

40 



OTHER INCIDENTS 4* 

in the minds of sceptical readers who have had no 
firsthand experience of these things. Such a distrust 
is natural, and is, indeed, to some extent well grounded. 
A bereaved mother, seeking evidence of her soldier- 
son's continued existence, of his love, of his hoped-for 
well-being, is not an ideal investigator. She is inevit- 
ably biased. Her emotions and strong desire are 
likely to affect her observation and interpretation of 
the phenomena. Her state of mind is entirely right 
and creditable, and we should not wish it different ; 
but it prevents us from accepting her testimony with 
entire confidence. And it is so, more or less, with the 
testimony of all investigators who have a strong emo- 
tional link with someone on the other side and a strong 
desire to know of his well-being. This is, of course, 
particularly so if they come new to the subject soon 
after their bereavement. An old investigator, who 
took up the research from scientific motives and has 
had years of experience, will be a reliable witness even 
after a near relative has gone over ; for he knows to 
be on his guard against his own bias. Yet even in 
such a case the sceptic will distrust, and we cannot 
altogether blame him. Where there inevitably is 
emotion, the critical faculty, speaking generally, can- 
not be at its alertest. 

It is on this count that I think my own testimony 
is, if I may say so, rather exceptionally trustworthy. 
I have no strong emotional link with anyone on the 
other side. My parents are there, it is true, and I 
hope my feelings are not unfilial ; but my mother 
died thirty years ago and my father eighteen years 
ago, and time heals the pain of such natural losses. 
Certainly I never felt any of that keen yearning for 
communication that many parents naturally feel in 



42 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

the case of the untimely death of a son. I did not be- 
come interested in psychical matters until about eight 
years after my father's death, and my motive was 
sheer scientific curiosity, entirely uncoloured by any 
special desire either about survival in general or the 
continued existence of my deceased relatives in par- 
ticular. 

Having found, through a certain trance-medium, 
a considerable amount of evidence for supernormality, 
which however did not prove, or purport to prove, 
spirits, I was interested enough to follow up the sub- 
ject with other mediums, whose powers bore more 
closely on the question of survival. My friends Mr. 
Knight and Mr. Oddy first undertook a series of sittings 
— extraordinarily successful ones, as it turned out — 
with Mr. A. Wilkinson, the " Watson " of my New 
Evidences in Psychical Research, and I have now been 
able to follow them up with sittings on my own account, 
carefully arranged and reported. And the point is, 
that although some of my deceased relatives do occa- 
sionally announce themselves, in entirely calm and 
unemotional ways, the major portion of the evidence 
concerns people whom I knew only slightly or not at all, 
and with whom, consequently, I have no emotional link. 

From this I hope it will be fairly clear, if my state- 
ment of a matter of fact is believed, that the element 
of emotional bias is not present in my case, and that 
no discount needs to be deducted from my evidence 
on this score. I will now give a few rather fragmentary 
incidents illustrating what has just been said. They 
are of similar character to those already described, 
except that they do not happen to be " meeting " 
cases. The spirits in question do not seem to have 
been in proximity to the earth- state and therefore 



OTHER INCIDENTS 43 

perceptible to the medium because they had come 
to meet some dying friend, but rather to have called 
in, so to speak, for reasons of their own, being inter- 
ested in the locality or in people known to me ; or, 
perhaps more probably, they may have been brought, 
by some spirit better known to me, for the express 
purpose of eliminating telepathy or at least making 
it seem improbable. 

It has often been said, at sittings, that a certain spirit 
brought another, as Mr. Leather brought his friends 
Sidney and Drayton; and there does, indeed, seem to 
have been something like a definite plan on the part 
of a small group of people, known to me in life but 
not related to me or in any way closely or emotionally 
linked with me, to supply me with evidence of survival 
which should exclude all the other and more scientific- 
ally fashionable hypotheses. And I admit that they 
have succeeded in convincing me. The separate items 
of evidence may seem not strong ; and certainly I 
should base no theory on any one of them alone. But 
the strength is cumulative. No one item is entirely 
without evidential strength, so it is not a case of adding 
a lot of nothings and making something. It is a case 
of adding littles until they make quite legitimately a 
mickle. The sticks are weak, but the faggot is strong. 

In my sitting of December 14th, 1914, among other 
evidential matter, the medium said : " Some man 
named Driver here.'''' This conveyed nothing in par- 
ticular to me, for though I immediately thought of a 
living Mr. Driver who was slightly known to me, I 
could not recall any deceased Drivers. On reflection 
afterwards I remembered one man of that name who 
died perhaps thirty years ago, but I knew him only 
by sight. 



44 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

In my sitting of February 17th, 1916, the medium 
said : "Do you know any Driver ?" To which I 
replied only: "Yes," thinking about the same living 
Driver as before. Later, after a great deal of extra- 
ordinary evidence about other people (e.g. the Mr. 
Charlton and the Walkleys mentioned in the foregoing 
chapter), the medium said, abruptly : "Have you known 
someone named Edmund ? " I said : " Yes," thinking 
of a local tradesman named Edmund Stott, who died 
a few years ago. The medium continued : 

" Man of seventy or seventy-three, this Edmund. Did 
not die about here ; I am taken away. He went to More- 
cambe. Might have lived at Morecambe, Might have 
lived or died there. Tall, fairly straight, full beard and 
on cheeks, big nose, well dressed, black, very tidy. Name, 
Edmund ; biggish-bodied man, good 'physique.''' [This, 
I thought, would fit Edmund Stott, except that I felt 
pretty sure that he died at home, sixty miles from 
Morecambe. The medium proceeded :] " I smell a 
smell of brewing — beer. Malt, as if you were passing 
a brewery. A nice smell. But ifs quite different from 
those flowers. [Pointing to flowers on the table.] Ifs 
malt.''' 

The medium looked rather puzzled, so I remarked : 
" No brewers among my relatives, but there is a con- 
nexion between brewing and Mr. Charlton." This 
latter gentleman, mentioned in the foregoing chapter, 
was a business man in quite a different line, but he 
was also interested in a brewery company. 

It will be observed that if telepathy from the con- 
scious levels of my own mind had any directing in- 
fluence on the phenomena, the medium ought to have 
dropped the Driver subject after the first shot on 
December 14th, 1914, for it evoked no particularly 



OTHER INCIDENTS 45 

fitting recollection. Then on February 17th, 1916, 
when an Edmund was mentioned and described, he 
ought to have got details about the draper's shop kept 
by a deceased Edmund Stott whom I had known. 
Instead of this, however, he went on to a smell of 
brewing, which I attributed to the influence of Mr. 
Charlton, though I recognized that this was a trifle 
far-fetched, as his connexion with the actual fact of 
brewing was not close. But, thinking of Mr. Charlton 
at the time, my thoughts — one might surmise, on a 
telepathic hypothesis — should have led the medium 
astray in a Charlton direction, as my thoughts about 
the draper should have led him among my Stott re- 
collections. But they did not. Now for the sequel. 

Happening to re-read the report of the February 
17th sitting a month later, I for the first time put the 
" Edmund " and the " Driver " together ; and the 
name seemed dimly known to me. After some re- 
flection I felt half sure that such a man had lived. 
Later, I began to remember, vaguely, that he had 
tenanted a hotel not far away, about twenty years ago. 
But I had known him — if, indeed, the recollection was 
trustworthy at all — only by sight, and had not thought 
of him for many years. However, I inquired of a 
relative, who said that a man of that name had cer- 
tainly kept that hotel ; so I investigated further, find- 
ing at length a friend of mine who had known Edmund 
Driver very well. The medium's description, says this 
friend, applies to Driver exactly, and more closely than 
it applies to Edmund Stott, whom also he knew. And 
at the time of Driver's tenancy of that hotel the owners 
brewed on the premises ; so the smell of brewing was 
very relevant. No relatives of his remain in the 
district. As to the medium's ever having heard 



46 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

of him, it is extremely improbable. He died while 
Wilkinson was a boy. 

The death, however, did not occur at Morecambe. 
But it happens that the son (known to me) of the 
owner of the hotel in those days does live there ; and 
I am inclined to think that Driver was trying to allude 
to him, in order to put me in the way of his own identi- 
fication. This is conjecture, and I do not press it. 
But I have so often found that an apparently wrong 
statement had evidential meaning behind it, that I 
think the conjecture in this case is justified. I think 
Driver was trying to say : " Ask Mr. , of More- 
cambe ; he will tell you about me," It is to be 
noted that the medium was uncertain about the nature 
of the Morecambe connexion ; probably he got the 
impression of Morecambe, and supplied by his own 
inference that Driver died there. 

It is, of course, impossible to feel absolutely sure 
that any one item of information has never entered a 
given person's mind; and we must remember that we 
have to allow for subliminal (forgotten) knowledge, quite 
apart from conscious deception, which in Wilkinson's 
case is completely excluded both by specific facts of 
evidence and by my high estimate of his character. 
Consequently, I would not build a theory on any one 
assumption, such as that of the medium's ignorance 
of facts concerning Edmund Driver. But when the 
evidence reaches a certain degree of extensiveness, an 
assumption of ignorance becomes justifiable. A medium 
may have some knowledge, subliminal or conscious, of 
one or two people of whom it seems improbable that 
he should know anything ; but when the number of 
people becomes considerable, this explanation by nor- 
mal knowledge becomes incredible. " There is a point," 



OTHER INCIDENTS 47 

Andrew Lang has well said, " at which the explanations 
of common sense arouse scepticism." Moreover, nor- 
mally acquired knowledge is eliminated in several cases 
where my friends or I have introduced sitters from 
another town, people of whom we knew next to nothing 
and whose deceased relatives cannot reasonably be 
supposed to have been known to the medium or 
to have been the subject of conversation in his 
hearing. 

As to why Edmund Driver communicated — if he 
was indeed here in propria persona — I do not know. 
Perhaps some friend of mine brought him, for evidence' 
sake, as Mr. Leather brought Mr. Sidney. And two 
things are perhaps noteworthy : (1) the hotel he kept 
is the nearest place of its kind to my house, where 
the sittings took place ; (2) he almost certainly knew 
me better than I knew him, for he would see me pass 
frequently on my way to the station. During the 
period of his tenancy I should pass it twice daily, and 
sometimes oftener. Also his brother and my father 
knew each other very well, and probably he himself 
was rather well known to my father, who, as it happens 
— if anything does " happen " — also purported to be 
present at the sitting of February 17th, and may have 
brought him. 

A less detailed but equally curious example of an 
unexpected and almost forgotten person communicat- 
ing may be briefly described. On January 15th, 1915, 
the medium said, among evidential matter : 

; ' When you were a little boy, did you know a tallish 
woman who had a wooden leg or a false foot ? Tall, 
thin woman ; thumps with her foot. Elderly. Thud 
every time her foot goes down. Been associated with you 
in your childhood days." 



48 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

This evoked no recollection at all in my mind 
Later in the same sitting the medium said : 

" Woman with foot wrong walks past again. Tall 
thin. Old-fashioned mantle she has on. It is the right 
foot that goes down with a thump." 

Here he got up and walked about, imitating the 
form that he could see, and limping heavily as with a 
short right leg. Still I failed to recognize ; and there 
the matter remained for over a year. Then, on March 
10th, 1916, I happened to mention the incident to 
my sister, who said the description reminded her of 
Emma Steeton. I then remembered Emma Steeton 
very well. The description fits, except that I am 
quite uncertain which leg was deficient, and I doubt 
whether she had a wooden leg or foot. Our impression 
is that her lameness was due to a fall. She was a 
worthy old cottager who lived near us in our childhood, 
and occasionally had us in to tea and looked after us 
generally if our parents were out. She died probably 
thirty years ago, and no relatives are left that I know 
of. Few living people will remember her, and I do not 
believe that Wilkinson has ever heard her mentioned, 
his orbit being very wide apart from that of the few 
living people who have any interest in her. At that 
time we were living in an outlying part of the village 
of Thornton — now a ward of Bradford — and Emma's 
circle of acquaintances was extremely small, her lame- 
ness keeping her near home to a greater extent than 
was the case with her neighbours — though they also 
were hard-working, stay-at-home villagers. 

Nothing more was heard of her for over a year, 
and of course I never mentioned her either by name 
or description to the medium. In my sitting of April 
12th, 1916, however, there was a reappearance. I do 



OTHER INCIDENTS 49 

not believe that Mr. Wilkinson had any conscious re- 
collection of the woman described fifteen months before, 
but of course I cannot prove that. I can only say 
that in my opinion he remembers practically nothing 
of what he has seen and said, unless something special 
has happened at a sitting only a few days before. If 
I could adequately represent his busy life, continually 
occupied with addresses and clairvoyance from Exeter 
to Aberdeen, very little of his time being spent 
at home, it would be clear to the reader that any 
normal memory-explanation of these sequential inci- 
dents is quite unacceptable. 

This is what was said on April 12th, 1916 : 
" Did you ever know a woman with a wood leg ? Tall, 
elderly, a wood foot or leg.'''' [I said I thought I knew 
who it was.] " / could hear the thud on the -floor ." [A. W. 
got up and limped about, thudding with his right foot.] 
" You would know this woman with the leg when you were 
a boy. She has been gone on many years. I feel as if 
she takes me somewhere where she lived. It is a local 
connexion ; I don't get far away.''' 1 [And, later in the 
same sitting :] " This woman with the wood leg must 
have had a good voice, and could sing. She is showing 
me some hymn-books ; she was interested in hymn-books 
and music.''' 

I have now made further inquiries of the two or 
three local cottagers who remember Mrs. Steeton, but 
not much detail is obtainable. Nothing special seems 
to be remembered about her voice, and I incline to 
think that this was an inference of Wilkinson's own 
mind. What he actually saw, with his psychic sight, 
was a hymn-book or some hymn-books, and this may 
have been merely a reminder of the Wesleyan Chapel 
near by, which she attended and the services at which 

E 



50 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

were probably the pleasantest and most notable inci- 
dents in her monotonous and lonely life — for she was 
a widow without children, so far as I know, and cer- 
tainly lived alone. This view that the hymn-books 
mean the chapel is supported by the incident which 
the reader will find later, described in the report of 
the sitting of January 15th, 1915, in which a Moses 
Young appeared, holding a chapel hymn-book. I had 
forgotten this old man, and even when I remembered 
him I had no recollection of his first name, which, as 
a matter of fact, turned out to be Moses. He attended 
the same chapel as we did, and his pew was conspicuous 
in my field of view, as my place in the choir was in 
his. I never had anything to do with him, and pro- 
bably never exchanged a word with him, rarely seeing 
him except on Sundays. The reminder of the chapel 
was therefore very appropriate. ^ 

I have been unable to ascertain whether Mrs. 
Steeton had a wooden leg or foot. All who remember 
her are, however, agreed about her lameness. There 
seems no certainty attainable as to which leg it was, 
though one informant, without knowing what answer 
I expected, said she thought it was the right leg, which 
is what the medium said. 

The name I have given is a pseudonym. I have 
hopes that the real name will yet come through, for 
Wilkinson is particularly good at names. The evidence 
will then be greatly improved. But I have not much 
doubt about Emma Steeton being intended, for she is 
the only lame woman I remember having known in 
my childhood days, and the other details also seem 
to fit. 



CHAPTER V 
Introduction to Detailed Reports 

In the foregoing chapters I have presented evidence 
extracted from the records of several sittings, in order 
that a series of connected incidents may be seen as 
a whole. But though this is necessary, something more 
is necessary also ; for the reader has no assurance 
that I am not picking out things that fit perhaps by 
chance, and suppressing many things which were 
meaningless or incorrect. Without a complete account 
of the sittings, with hits and misses fully recorded, it 
is impossible to estimate the evidential value of inci- 
dents contained in them, I therefore now give the 
reports as copied from my verbatim shorthand notes, 
with comments made the same day or within two 
days of the sittings. These reports are complete as 
to misses, though not quite complete as to hits ; for 
I have had to omit several striking pieces of evidence 
out of consideration for living relatives of the spirit 
communicating — often someone quite unrelated and, 
indeed, only slightly known to me. Consequently, in 
estimating the evidence here presented, the reader may 
feel sure that he is estimating on the conservative 
side. If I could have given the reports in absolute 
completeness, the evidence would have been much 
stronger. 

It will be seen that though the reports contain in 
scattered fragments the matter quoted connectedly 

51 



53 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

in the foregoing chapters, they are not merely a repeti- 
tion, for they contain many other small incidents of 
an evidential character, duly explained in the inserted 
notes. 

In the first few sittings, though everything said 
by the medium (except for the reservations just men- 
tioned) is put down, there is no verbatim record of 
what I myself said. It may, of course, be taken for 
granted that I was on my guard to give nothing away, 
and I am absolutely sure that I gave no information 
or guidance save what is recorded ; the Torringham 
and Walker incidents being the main ones. But, 
realizing the importance of absolutely verbatim re- 
ports, I succeeded in later sittings in getting down 
everything that was said during the period of the 
clairvoyance, whether by the medium or myself. The 
reader will therefore be able to judge for himself how 
much or how little assistance I involuntarily gave. 

As to facial indications or the like, I think I may 
say that I have a fairly sphinx-like countenance — so, 
at least, I have been told by friends — and I do not 
think much is revealed in that way. For one thing, 
I am so busy doing the reporting that my mind does 
not always quite take in all the connotations and 
significances, in the stress of getting the words down 
correctly ; and, further, no expression of countenance 
would tell the medium my great-grandmother's maiden 
name or the occupation of Benjamin Torrington's 
father, whom I had never known. And in this matter 
of names, a department in which Wilkinson is far 
ahead of any other medium I have ever known or heard 
of, there is hardly ever any fishing or hesitancy. The 
Torringham and Walker incidents were very excep- 
tional ; the name is usually hit off at the first shot, 



INTRODUCTION TO REPORTS 53 

with no hesitancy whatever. And there is no physical 
contact in the sittings, so muscle-reading is excluded. 

I wish I could make it as clear to the reader's mind 
as it is to my own, that, whatever the true explanation, 
it certainly is not a normal one. Knowledge is shown, 
in the clairvoyant gleams, which has not entered the 
medium's mind through the known sensory channels. 
Unfortunately, I cannot pass on to others my con- 
viction on this point, partly because firsthand ex- 
perience is more convincing than secondhand testi- 
mony, and partly because I cannot give all the evidence 
on which my conviction is based. For instance, on 
one occasion a certain spirit was said to be present, 
and the medium got an impression concerning a private 
family matter in which that particular spirit would 
certainly be interested. I am absolutely sure that only 
four people knew of the matter — four people, that is, 
on this side. And it is certain that none of them had 
told Wilkinson about it. A curious feature was that 
the medium did not get the details, which on a tele- 
pathic hypothesis we might expect he would ; he got 
just enough to show that some intelligence which did 
know them was at work. Things of this kind have 
occurred several times, and they irresistibly suggest 
that a discarnate mind is conveying to the medium 
just sufficient allusion to private matters to indicate 
supernormality and its own identity, without giving 
enough detail to enable the medium to understand. 

Other contributory pieces of evidence come to me 
from people who visit halls in various towns where 
Wilkinson is giving platform clairvoyance. For in- 
stance, only yesterday (October 26th, 1916) I heard 
from my friend Dr. Horsman — who is not a member 
of any spiritualist society — that he attended a meeting 



54 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

in Northumberland last week, and that Wilkinson 
described and named a spirit beside him, said to have 
been a doctor who died of blood-poisoning some time 
ago, aged about sixty-three. The full Christian name 
and surname were given, but were not recognized by 
either Dr. Horsman or anyone else in the room. Making 
inquiries later, however, he discovered that a doctor 
of that name had died in a town some miles away, 
eighteen years ago, aged sixty-three, and that the 
cause of death was blood-poisoning. Also that one of 
his own (Dr. Horsman's) patients had formerly been 
attended by the doctor in question;, and had been 
operated on by him. Perhaps he is still interested in 
the " case " ! 

As to Wilkinson's knowledge of Bradford people r 
past and present, I am confident that it is practically 
nil. He never comes into the district except to see 
me. And I am equally sure that he has not amassed 
subliminal perceptions in local cemeteries, for he says 
he has never been in one about here, and I believe him. 
Sensitives are not fond of such places ; not that the 
fact of death is as terrible to them as it is to 
the average person, but because the emotional atmo- 
sphere, so to speak, is depressing, as a result of the 
living mourners who are continually there. 

There remains the consideration of how much I 
involuntarily " let out " in general conversation before 
the sitting. This is not noted down, because it is not 
worth it. I fear that here I must make demands on 
the reader's faith. I cannot prove that I do not let 
things out. I can only say that in these preliminary 
conversations, which usually last only a few minutes 
before clairvoyance begins, the subject is the weather, 
the war, or anything except deceased people or private 



INTRODUCTION TO REPORTS 55 

affairs ; and that a man of cautious habit and of rather 
unfluent speech, trained to further restraint by years 
of psychical research, is not likely to spoil the evidence 
by telling a medium things that he does not want him 
to know. 

For the sake of furnishing additional data for the 
reader's judgment, in the exact form in which they 
were received, I include extracts from some of Mr. 
Wilkinson's letters. Lest it should be thought that I 
have involuntarily given information in general corre- 
spondence with him, I may here say that we do not 
" correspond " in the ordinary sense at all. I write 
when I want to ask for a sitting ; that is all. And I 
am careful not to give anything away that would 
spoil possible evidence. He himself is equally keen 
on this ; and at sittings he often says : " Don't tell 
me anything ; let's see if more will come " ; and 
after a sitting I never expatiate on the details. I 
usually say: "You got some very good clairvoyance," 
or "I recognized most of them," or something like 
that, encouraging but not informing. 

Mr. Wilkinson's mediumship is remarkable, as I 
have just said, in the ease and correctness with which 
he gets names. This is usually one of the difficult 
things in mediumistic communications. Most mediums 
seem to have to guess at a name from some symbolic 
pictures which they see, as when Mrs. Thompson's 
Nelly gave the name " Happy field " — seeing children 
playing happily in a field — the right name being 
" Merrifield." No doubt the method varies, and some- 
times there is a more direct communication, even in 
cases like Mrs. Thompson's and Mrs. Piper's. In 
Wilkinson's case I think his exceptional success in this 
department may be due to his very bad sight. He 



56 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

has had several operations on his eyes, and is indeed 
half blind, even with his specially- made glasses, re- 
inforced with a lens for reading. Consequently his 
world is much more a world of sounds, and much less 
a world of sights, than the world of a normal person ; 
and his perceptivity will perhaps therefore be above 
the normal, in non-visual directions. This is so, even 
in my own case. I am extremely shortsighted ; but 
my hearing is more acute than that of anyone else in 
the house, and I can recognize voices much better than 
most people. Also, it is somewhat the same with my 
sense of smell. It will be noticed by the reader of the 
sitting-reports in this volume that Wilkinson often gets 
supernormal facts through his psychic sense of smell, 
as he gets names through his psychic hearing — clair- 
audience or direct impression. 

I now give the full reports, preceded by copies of the 
letters mentioned. These are arranged chronologically. 



CHAPTER VI 

Medium's Letters, and Reports 

Extract from letter dated July 22nd, 1907, from Mr. 
Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

. . . Respecting a seance, I might tell you I don't 
habit myself to giving private ones, as I am more a 
public test giver, but, of course, I may possibly be 
able to say something to you. I take no fee unless 
I give an equivalent, so that should I come to see 
you my out-of-pocket expenses would be my only 
charge. I could not come very well this week, and 
next week I am away from home nearly all the week 
in Lancashire, so that as soon as I can conveniently 
spend an afternoon with you I will do so. It would 
perhaps be as well if you just dropped me a card, say 
in about two weeks from now. I shall then at least 
by to-morrow fortnight have returned from Walsall, 
where I have engagements to meet, and if you did 
so it then would not slip my mind, as I have so many 
calls. 

Extract from letter dated February 2Uh, 1911, from 
Mr. Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

... I quite appreciate the tone of your letter when 
you say you and your friends believe in my honesty, 
though, of course, that does not prove much. Re- 
specting the results obtained through me at any of 
the sittings, I can emphatically say no previous in- 

57 



58 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

formation had been given me by anyone. Referring 
to the possibility of me seeing a tombstone inscrip- 
tion, I may tell you I never was in a cemetery in Thorn- 
ton in my life, and moreover how would I know which 
to visit to find such, not knowing you in any way ? I 
am fully aware of the practices of fraudulent mediums 
and the necessary caution to be taken to guard against 
such, so that I quite understand your reference. If 
the phenomena are not what they purport to be, then 
I cannot say what they are or how it comes about. 
I am perfectly conscious that no other than the proper 
motive has prompted me. My chief regret is that 
the power is so limited. . . . 

Extract from letter dated March Srd, 1911, from 
Mr. Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

... A strange feeling touches me while I write 
you, and a voice speaks in my ear : " Tell him John 
Hey is very interested in his welfare." Of course, I 
don't know if you ever knew such a man, but he was 
old when he died, and related to you somehow, I 
think. 

[My mother's father was John Hey, and he 

died at eighty. He appears in various sittings 

later.] 

Extract from letter dated Newcastle- on-Tyne, March 20th, 

1911, from Mr. Wilkinson to J. A. H. 
... It seems to me so strange that this faculty 
should be looked on in the light it is, because it appears 
so natural to me. ... I am not an imaginative 
person, I am sure, and it would be difficult to imagine 
things of this kind, which almost invariably are proven 
to be correct. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 59 

[Wilkinson has often said to me, when a form 
has appeared to him with exceptional clearness : 
"Do you really see nothing ? I can hardly be- 
lieve you can't see that form ; it is as real to my 
eyes as you are or as my own body is." But I 
think the " sight " is psychical, not physical, for 
he sees more detail in the forms than he could 
see with his physical sight. I should say it is 
true that he is not imaginative ; he is quiet, 
matter-of-fact, critical, not jumpy, or oratorical, or 
neurotic] 

Extract from letter dated November 2Uh, 1911, from 
Mr, Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

P.S. — While writing to you I am visibly impressed 
by the name of " Bannister." I have no idea whether 
it is a man or woman, and I cannot feel a name to 
precede it* I thought I would just drop it down ; it 
might interest you, whether it means anything or not. 

A. W. 

[My father's name was Bannister Hill. I have 

no reason to think that this was known to the 

medium, and I did not tell him anything about 

the correctness or applicability of his impression.] 



SITTING 1 

July 21st, 1914, 2.20 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. Present, J.A.H. 
and medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

This was very nearly a blank sitting. Probably 
the medium was not yet quite at ease, having seen me 
only twice before, not in this house ; also he is very 



6o PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

thoughtful for others, and was no doubt more or less 
anxious lest I should get nervous or tired, my heart not 
being good. And, whatever theory we adopt in ex- 
planation of the phenomena as a whole, it is certain 
that any anxiety on the medium's part tends to inhibit 
them. 

The following is all that was obtained. 
A. W. : I get an impression of a Jonas. Also of a 
Sarah connected with him. She died since him. 

[I had a great-uncle Jonas, who died in 1898. 

He had a niece Sarah, who died some years later. 

She was his sister's daughter, and was my aunt.] 

1 get the name Dunlop. Doctor ; medical doctor. 

Old times. 

[A Dr. Dunlop lived at Dunlop House, about 
three-quarters of a mile from here, dying or re- 
moving probably forty or fifty years ago. I re- 
member my father used to talk of him ; he was 
before my time.] 
There is a man behind you. Armitage or Hermi- 
tage. Arthur. Thirty-five to forty years old. Dead. 
[I knew an Arthur Armitage who died about 
1902, probably aged thirty-five or thirty-six. But 
the acquaintance was of the slightest. I am 
not sure that I ever spoke to him, but I knew 
him well by sight, as I am sure he knew me, for 
I passed his shop frequently. I know no reason 
why he should appear at my sitting.] 
I get the name Leather. Old man, very gentle- 
manly ; rather retiring. I hesitate to say the name ; 
never heard it before as a name ; it only means boots, 
etc., to me. 

[I knew a Mr. Leather very well, and the 
description fits him exactly. It happens that I 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 61 

met him mostly at whist evenings at Dunlop House 
— long after Dr. Dunlop's time, — a doctor living 
there who was more or less a friend of mine as 
well as of Mr. Leather. That was in 1893 and 
for a few years afterwards, but certainly not ex- 
tending later than 1897. If Mr. Leather wanted 
to remind me of himself and of shared experiences, 
he would be likely to mention the Thursday 
evenings at Dunlop House.] 
Clairvoyance ended. I may here mention that I 
never visited Dunlop House after my friend left it, 
about the year 1896 ; nor, I feel sure, did Mr. Leather. 
It no longer exists as a house, for it was divided and 
made into cottages within two or three years after 
my friend's removal. (See Chapter II.) 

Extract from letter dated Bournemouth, November 18th, 
1914, from Mr. Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

By the way, did you ever know someone named 
" Parrbury," or some such name ? I am impressed it 
would be a very old gentleman you might have known ; 
however, I get the feeling while I am holding your 
letter. He was a man who retained his faculties in 
a large measure till the end of life almost. I am not 
sure, but I feel perhaps he was called Robert, but of 
that I could not be too sure : the other name, how- 
ever, being so uncommon that I thought I would 
tell it to you. He evidently is keenly interested in 
you. . . . 

[On reading this I thought it was meaningless. 
But when I told my sister she remarked that Mr. 
Leather's name was Robert Parrbury Leather 
(spelling of second word uncertain). I knew he 
was Robert P. Leather, and may have known 



62 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

the middle name, but if so, I had forgotten it. 
On November 21st, 1914, after inquiry, I found 
that the name was Robert Parberry Leather.] 



SITTING 2 

Monday, December 14th, 1914, 2.30 to 4.30 p.m. Present, 
J. A. H. and medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

In preliminary conversation I told Mr. Wilkinson 
that the Parrbury of a recent letter of his to me had 
meaning, and he then said that when he wrote that 
letter he felt that " Parrbury " was waiting for some 
old friend to pass over. I remarked : " Very good and 
true ; an old friend was dying." The facts are that 
Henry Drayton, the brother-in-law and lifelong friend 
of Robert Parberry Leather, died on November 29th, 
1914, aged eighty-nine. Wilkinson (as we have seen) 
wrote the letter about " Parrbury " eleven days before 
— on the 18th. 

My mind being occupied more or less with these 
men, I expected some appearance of one or other 
of them at the sitting; but, as the following record 
shows, no mention of either of them was made. Perhaps 
they have now gone on together. 

After further general talk the medium said : 

I get the feeling of a Helen — spelt with an H. 
[A. W. pronounced the word again, aspirating it 
strongly.] It is Helen Torringham, or some such 
name. 

[A. W. seemed uncertain about the ending. I 
supplied " Torrington," having known many people 
of that name. He accepted it, remarking that 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 63 

he knew some Torringhams ; hence, perhaps, his 
mistake.] 
Middle-aged or rather more ; portly figure, been 
deceased a good many years, and the form I see is very 
ethereal. She moves behind your chair. She moves 
about a good deal, and I feel that she is looking for 
someone who is not here. She has something on her 
head, I cannot see what ; all is so thin. A shrewd 
woman. 

[All correct for a Mrs. Torrington, if the Chris- 
tian name is right. I have no recollection of what 
it was, but will ascertain. She died in 1896. 

(Later — December 22nd, 1914. I have in- 
quired, and find that Helen is correct.) 

She usually wore a white lace cap on her head, 
indoors. The description is correct in every detail, 
except perhaps age. She died at about sixty-five. 
(Note. — April 14th, 1916. But A. W. calls people 
" middle-aged " up to sixty or more. He has said 
so, specifically, in a later sitting, April 12th, 1916, 
referring — curiously enough — to a reappearance of 
this same person.) She was no relation, but I 
knew the whole family intimately ; the son was 
a chum of mine, and a daughter of hers had called 
two days before the sitting, apparently leaving her 
influence. No doubt it was for her that Mrs. 
Torrington was looking. The latter had a char- 
acteristic way of emphasizing her aspirates, speak- 
ing very deliberately. I often used to notice this.] 
Now there is a very old lady, of rather low stature, 
standing by the couch end, looking at you. Hair very 
grey, and done over the forehead like this [indicating 
with two forefingers two curved lines from centre of 
upper part of forehead to the temples]. Face drawn 



64 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

and old, but nice. Wide dress, very full ; pleated — 
a good dress. Rather a proud old person. Name 
Mary. Quite old, close on eighty. 

[All correct for my maternal grandmother, 
Mary Hey, who died March 21st, 1890, aged eighty- 
one. There was no photograph of her in the room, 
and I have never talked to Mr. Wilkinson about 
my deceased relatives. I have no belief that he 
has any normally-acquired knowledge of any of 
them.] 
Helen is still here, but she has nothing to do with 
Mary ; they go apart to show that they are not con- 
nected. Helen is looking about for someone not here ; 
someone she would like to speak to. She was a woman 
with will, " plenty about her," as we say in Yorkshire. 
[Correct ; and true that she and my grand- 
mother were not related. But they knew each 
other in life, and it is not surprising that they 
appeared together.] 
Mary is still standing there, like an image, looking 
at you. 

A voice behind me says, " Purcell." A man ; 
quite another influence. 

[Several years ago some relatives of mine 

named Purcell lived in this house. But they are 

still living. Perhaps an ancestor was trying to 

communicate. See sitting of June 5th, 1916.] 

There is a Timothy about ; I don't know whether 

it is Purcell or not. 

I get Benjamin Torrington. Helen and Benjamin 
had some association. Benjamin was an old man. 

[Timothy unrecognized. Benjamin Torring- 
ton, Helen's husband, died about 1901, aged 
nearly eighty.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 65 

There is a funny smell. Have you known some- 
body who kept a drug-shop ? I smell all kinds of 
concoctions, as in a drug-shop. 

[I learnt a fortnight after the sitting that Ben- 
jamin Torrington's father, who, I suppose, would 
be dead before my time, had kept a druggist's 
shop, so Benjamin would be in that atmosphere 
until he married.] 
The old lady is dying away gradually. Prim old 
person. 

I feel as if I were in a drug-shop. 
Somebody here called Purcell, an old man. Might 
be Timothy ; not sure. 

Have you known somebody called Walker ? Had 
you visitors yesterday or Saturday ? Some influence 
is left. 

At some time or other you had acquaintances called 
Walker. 

[But the medium seemed uncertain about the 

last syllable, so I remarked " Walkley, perhaps." 

Friends of ours thus named lived near, from 1883 

to 1900. One died in 1898 or 1899, another in 

1900. No relatives of theirs, or anyone of that 

name, so far as I know, remain in this district. 

They were well known to my grandmother and 

to the Torringtons.] 

Have you had anybody called James Bannister 

connected with you ? I feel old-fashioned, about my 

neck. Shirt. A big, powerful man. [Gets up, squares 

shoulders, standing erect.] This goes back a long 

number of years ; before this place was built. [House 

is twenty-five years old.] Your people have been 

farmers. Somebody belonging to your mother been 

farmers. 



66 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[James Bannister is unrecognized ; but my 
father's paternal grandmother was a Bannister 
before marriage, and James might be a brother or 
her father. I am trying to trace my Bannister 
ancestors, but it is difficult. My father was named 
Bannister Hill, after them. My mother's father 
owned two farms at one time, though he was 
hardly a farmer. It is probable, however, that 
there were farmers farther back.] 
Some man named Driver here. Funny name. 

[Unrecognized. I know some living Drivers 
slightly.] 
I get the name Ishmael. There is quite a circle, 
but all is mixed up. I feel among a farming class. 

[Ishmael Ogden was my maternal grand- 
mother's brother. I do not know whether he was 
a farmer or not. I never knew him.] 
James Bannister again. Something to do with a 
quarry. Lot of stone and flags [flagstones] about. 
Long time back. 

[Likely enough, for my grandfather, John Hill, 
was a quarry owner and stone merchant, and, 
as said, his mother was a Bannister before mar- 
riage.] 
I feel all the accompaniments of a quarry — horses, 
wagons. 

(End of clairvoyance.) 

During the sitting the medium had kept pencil 
and paper in front of him on the table, and occasion- 
ally wrote a few words. These were found to be 
" Benjamin Torrington " and " Ishmael." 

Wilkinson gets at the length of time that has 
elapsed since death partly by a direct impression or 
intuition, and partly by the solidity or thinness of 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 67 

the form. But it is, apparently, chiefly intuitional, 
for though Helen Torrington was so ethereal that he 
could hardly see her, he did not place her a long way 
back in time. She died, as a matter of fact, in 1896 ; 
my grandmother, he said, was solid and lifelike — he 
could see her eyes and every detail. Yet she died in 
1890. It rather looks as if the solidity or thinness of 
a form indicates the stage of progress of that spirit, 
for I should say that though both Mrs. Torrington and 
my grandmother were shrewd and able women in a 
material sense, and about equal in intellect, the former 
was the more spiritual of the two, and she may accord- 
ingly have progressed farther away from earth con- 
ditions. 



SITTING 3 

Friday, January 15th, 1915. Present, J. A. H., medium 
(Mr. A. Wilkinson), and Mr. Trevor for a few 

minutes. 

About five minutes after the medium's arrival, and 
while we were talking about ordinary things, an un- 
expected and infrequent visitor called : Mr. Trevor, 
vicar of a parish not far away. He came in for ten 
minutes and I introduced him by name. Immediately 
after his departure Wilkinson said : " What did you 
say that man's name was ? " I told him, and he re- 
marked : "I thought I heard somebody say ' King ' ; 
a shadow, older than him, and not so tall — a faint 
outline or phantom — seemed to come out of him." 

Mr. Trevor's predecessor in the vicariate of his 
parish was named King. He died in 1909, aged sixty- 
four. Mr. Trevor is under fifty, and taller than Mr. 



68 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

King was. Mr. Trevor's waistcoat indicated his voca- 
tion, but I do not think that he or his predecessor 
was known to the medium, either by sight or by name. 
I have good reason for believing that Wilkinson has 
never been in that particular church — which is many 
miles from his home — and not often even in the parish. 
After a few minutes' silence, Wilkinson continued : 

There is a man there by the bookcase, right-hand 
corner ; very old man, big, full features. Been gone 
some time ; old-fashioned shirt, white, very clean. 
Elias Sidney. [Medium took paper and pencil and 
wrote " Elias Sidney."] Politics interested him ; rather 
a strong politician, Radical or strong Liberal. Been 
dead some time. Somebody brought him, somebody 
on the other side, who has manifested here before. 
Not lived here. Good colour in his face. There is 
somebody behind him, and he shadows him. Had to 
do with Liberals. Rather heavy on his feet. 
[Unrecognized.] 

Have you been connected with anyone called 
Young ? Old man, straight, grey hair, nice old gentle- 
man. He has a hymn-book in his hand ; looks like a 
chapel hymn-book. 

[Couldn't remember anybody at the moment, 
but thought of several living Youngs well known 
to me.] 

Sidney appears again ; somebody brought him — 
some spirit. 

I feel as if somebody took me on a train, not a long 
way. To Bradford, then train to some place, hilly, 
where there is a big building. I go very quickly to 
this place, very large place on a hill, workhouse or 
prison. Asylum place ; asylum. 

I do feel moidered. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 69 

You don't know anybody at Menston ? Some 

influence takes me in that direction. I don't get into 

the asylum. I feel big, tall, strong, a young influence. 

Train, railway, feeling of backwards and forwards, on 

a railway. Menston is not far from Bradford, is it ? 

[W. knows of the large asylum at Menston, of 

course. Young man unrecognized. Later : I have 

found indications of the truth of this, but the 

matter is private.] 

Did you ever know a Moses Young ? 

[I said I( believed so — not sure. I now find, 
on asking a relative, that the father of a local 
Young known to me was named Moses. I knew 
him when I was a boy ; he went to the same 
chapel. The hymn-book is perhaps a reminder 
of this. His pew was very prominently in front 
of me as I sat in the choir, and he would be con- 
tinually seeing me, past the minister, the pulpit 
being nearly between us, I was in the gallery, 
he in the area. No relation to us.] 
There is a woman here named Mary Bannister. She 
is not very tall, I see her hair ; it stands up a bit — 
a bit wiry ; she is rather full figure. Been dead some 
time, by style of hair dressing ; very antique, ancient. 

[My father's paternal grandmother was Mary 
Bannister before marriage. I know nothing of 
her personal appearance.] 
Sidney comes and goes. Enthusiast at politics. 
There is somebody with Mary Bannister named 
Jowett, a man, with peculiar leggings on, kind of boots, 
long ones, very big ones ; no hair on lips or chin, but 
whiskers sticking out at sides, very old-fashioned man, 
big, old. A very long way back. He lived in a very 
country place. 



70 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[Unrecognized ; but I believe there is a Jowett 
strain in us, some way back.] 
There is a young man, rather tall, nicely built, 
moustache, rather weird, intent look — a bit wild, be- 
wildered ; age twenty-five or twenty- six, biggish man. 
Looks strange, as if he had been lost. A motionless 
image, steady gaze. 

[Unrecognized. Later : but see sittings of 
June 5th and August 2nd, 1916.] 
Sidney got excited when discussing politics. 
There are a lot of men about you [i.e. J. A. H.] — 
oldish men. That woman, Mary Bannister, had a 
curious, old-fashioned dress. It stood out. Have you 
known a lady, who died in middle life, named Hanson ? 
She would be ill some time. Interested in school life — 
I feel as if she moved in a school atmosphere. Some- 
thing to do with a school, very nice-looking woman, 
much afflicted before death. 
[Unrecognized. 

Later : But see sitting of April 19th, 1916.] 
There is a face over you, pale, rather small features. 
Head and shoulders. Serious look on face, but slight 
smile ; name Mary. Face like marble just here [touch- 
ing cheeks near mouth]. Right over your head, builds 
up over you ; over sixty by the look of her, but not 
an old woman. Delicate. Inclined to be religious. 

[True of my mother except that she was only 

fifty-four at death — but she looked older — and 

had not been a particularly delicate woman, 

though always pale and thin. W. has described 

and named her before. See my New Evidences.] 

When you were a little boy did you know a tallish 

woman who had a wooden leg or a false foot ? Tall, 

thin woman ; thumps with her foot. Elderly. Thud 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 71 

every time her foot goes down. Been associated with 
you in your childhood days. 
[Unrecognized. 

Later : See note at end of this sitting, also 
sitting of April 12th, 1916, in which the same 
person reappears.] 
You remember me seeing an old man here before 
— I can't remember his name. [Here W. seemed ex- 
cited and eager, so I suggested " Leather."] Yes, 
Leather. It is Mr. Leather who has brought Elias 
Sidney. They were cronies ; they were cronies. [W. 
laughs.] Sidney has been passed away longer than 
Mr. Leather. 

A girl moves towards the bed. About fifteen years 
old. Tall, pale girl, lot of hair, beautiful, pale features. 
Slender, graceful. Hair not " up." Something in 
her hand — looks like music, copy of music. Been gone 
some time. Somebody is in this house that she has 
known. Subtle ; I can nearly see through her form. 
Name Purcell, I think. 

[Unrecognized, but must make inquiries. I 
have an aunt who married a Purcell, and Wilkin- 
son has got this name before, so there is probably 
some sense in it. 

Later : Cannot make anything out. If a 
Christian name had been got, I might have found 
some application.] 
There is a man by the side of you, looking down 
at you. He has a sort of long pinafore on ; prime 
of life, about forty or forty-two, nicely built, mous- 
tache, no beard, the pinafore is soiled and dirty. Died 
suddenly ; his death was a surprise to all who knew 
him. He had something to do with someone you 
[J. A. H.] know intimately. There was some sort of 



72 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

special trouble when he died ; of course, death always 
causes sorrow to those left, but in this case there was 
some sort of special trouble. He was not related to 
you, but there is some connexion, I see a lot of 
steps which run up ; a warehouse. Funny smell 
— musty. I think the man must have been a wool- 
sorter. Died very suddenly. No machinery about. 
Warehouse. 

[Unrecognized. But my Purcell relatives are 

in the wool trade, so I must inquire of them. 
Wool-sorters wear a sort of pinafore, known 

locally as a " checker brat," and this gets very 

dirty in front. 

Later : My relatives do not recognize him. 

But the warehouse, steps, smell, and wool are 

significant, and if a name could be got it might 

recall the man.] 
The girl has some connexion with your family, a 
good way back. Her hair looks fair, sandy, her form 
is very subtle ; might be dead before your time, but 
perhaps some living person could tell. In your family 
circle. 

That girl lived near a quarry : I see flags and stones. 
She is very attractive. Has not manifested here be- 
fore. Long gone. 

There is a man, Jonathan Ainsworth. Big man, 
tremendous. [W. stood up and seemed half under 
control.] I do feel big, as if I nearly touched the 
ceiling. He and a John Hey collaborated. An old 
gentleman. Ainsworth not so old as Hey. Yewton is 
to do with Hey. [W. spelt it, tentatively, but seemed 
at a loss or confused, thinking it was a man's name.] 
Hey and Ainsworth had to do with Yewton. I see 
a barn. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 73 

[Here I interposed to help, saying: "Yewton 
is a farm, not a man." John Hey was my maternal 
grandfather. He once had two farms near Yew- 
ton, and his daughter still owns one of them. I 
think its land adjoins Yewton. They are across 
the valley, a mile or two from here. I know of 
no connexion of my grandfather's with Yewton 
itself, and Ainsworth is unrecognized, but I will 
inquire about him through my aunt, John Hey's 
daughter. 

Later : January 22nd, 1915. My aunt says 
that she, and her father, John Hey, knew a Jona- 
than Hainsworth who hawked tea a long time ago. 
But he was short and bent, and had no special 
connexion with John Hey or with Yewton, so 
far as she knows. He was an old man, and pro- 
bably died long before my grandfather Hey, who 
died in 1889.] 
Woman with foot wrong walks past again. Tall, 
thin. Old-fashioned mantle she has on. It is the 
right foot that goes down with a thump. [Medium 
got up and walked, imitating her, as if with a short 
right leg or a wooden leg.] 

School, woman named Hanson. I see desks, scholars. 
[Unrecognized. 

Later : See sitting of April 19th, 1916.] 
What a lot of Marys there are about you ! I get 
mixed among them. 

[My mother and both grandmothers were 
named Mary, also a great-grandmother.] 
I wonder who that poor young man can be ? 

[Apparently the one who looked wild.] 
I suppose somebody lived here before you ? This 
is not a new house. 



74 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[It is about twenty-five years old, and has had 
several tenants.] 

I feel as if I were in a warehouse. Fusty old smell. 
Somebody has been about you as if their clothes smell. 
No machinery. Warehouse. 

Benjamin : male side of you. Some man getting 
on in years ; tall. 

[Unrecognized.] 

Here the medium sat back and apparently could 
get nothing more. He had been at it for nearly an 
hour. (In this Report I am compelled to omit some 
good evidence involving other people.) I got most 
of it down verbatim, though once or twice he went 
too fast and I missed a few words. Between each 
burst, so to speak, he is silent, or muttering abstract- 
edly, " m , m ," but gives the impression of 

intense listening, a tense concentration, not merely of 
listening with his ears, but with all of him. It is diffi- 
cult to describe this, for intense effort seems incom- 
patible with passivity ; but nevertheless there is some- 
how a combination of the two. I have noticed it 
before, but never so markedly as in this sitting 
— e.g. about the girl of fifteen or sixteen I said : 
" Try to get her name," and he said : " I'm trying " ; 
and his intense effort of " listening," or feeling, or 
reaching, or straining after something just beyond 
reach and beyond audibility, was particularly notice- 
able. 

I told him very little about how far he was correct, 
but said I recognized Mary Bannister. He would see 
that several of them were unknown to me, and pro- 
bably this led him to wonder whether they belonged 
to some of the people who lived here before us, which 
indeed is probably the truth. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 75 

Note : February 5th, 1915. 1 

I asked a relative who is a local Liberal worker 
and business man whether the name Elias Sidney was 
known to him. He said : " No." I told him why I 
asked, and gave him the details of what Wilkinson had 
said ; but they stirred no recollections — he did not 
remember ever hearing of the man or the name before. 
He said, however, that he thought he could ascertain 
whether such a man had existed, by asking some old 
Bradford Liberal. 

To-day, February 5th, 1915, he called and informed 
me that he has made inquiries in the town, and has 
found a man who knew Elias Sidney very well indeed ; 
that he died eight or nine years ago, but had long been 
retired from public life, being a very old man ; and 
that he (Sidney) was one of a coterie of friends — all 
vigorous politicians on the Liberal side, to which he 
(my relative's informant) and Mr. Leather belonged. 
Their rendezvous was a certain Liberal Club. 

My relative did not tell his informant why he 
asked ; he merely asked whether he had ever known 
an Elias Sidney. 

The name Elias Sidney still sounds quite un- 
familiar to me, and if I did not know a good deal 
about the possibilities of subliminal memory I should 
be prepared to swear that I had never heard of him. 
Certainly he cannot have been a prominent man in 

1 In what follows, and in other places, there is some repetition of 
matter which has appeared in the earlier chapters ; but I think the 
critical reader will wish to see my notes exactly as made at the time, 
so I reproduce them fully. They are sometimes instructive by 
showing the difficulty I had in verifying certain statements of the 
medium ; and this difficulty has a bearing on the evidential aspect, 
since — generally — what I found it difficult to verify, the medium is 
proportionally unlikely to have known normally. 



76 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

any way, or my relative would have known the name ; 
for he has been in close touch with leading local busi- 
ness men for thirty years (he is fifty), and also with 
local politics. 

Note : April 29th, 1916. 

It occurred to me that a gentleman fairly well 
known to me — professor in a theological college — 
might have known Elias Sidney, so I wrote and asked 
him a week ago. To-day I have seen him ; he knew 
Mr. Sidney well, and says that the description given 
by the medium is exact. I have now learnt from him, 
for the first time, where Mr. Sidney lived ; the town 
is neither Bradford — where I live — nor Halifax — in an 
out- district of which the medium lives. It is more 
distant from the latter than from the former. 

May 3rd, 1916. — Yesterday I ascertained that Mr. 
Sidney died on January 7th, 1909 (seven weeks before 
Mr. Leather), aged eighty-three. He was a keen 
politician and excitable ; went to a certain Liberal 
Club every day when well enough, for many years, 
staying from 3 p.m. till about 7. p.m. Mr. Leather went 
almost daily to the same club, at about the same time. 
I have seen a photograph of Mr. Sidney, and the 
description fits. I cannot find that the medium ever 
goes to the small town where Mr. Sidney lived (I have 
interviewed people who live there, including spiritual- 
ists, who would be likely to know if he did), and there 
seems no reason to believe that Mr. Sidney was known 
to him even by name. And, in particular, it is in the 
last degree unlikely that he could have known of the 
association of Mr. Sidney and Mr. Leather at the 
Liberal Club, for neither my friends nor I, who knew 
Mr. Leather fairly intimately, were aware of it. Nor 
can he reasonably be supposed to know of my meeting 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 77 

Mr. Leather at Dunlop House. The most rational 
theory seems to be that the surviving mind of Mr. 
Leather himself was in operation. 

March 10th, 1916. — Mentioning to my sister an old 
woman, lame, who was described in a Wilkinson sitting, 
she said it reminded her of Emma Steeton. I then got 
this report, and read to her the two paragraphs (pp. 70, 
73) about the lame woman. The description certainly 
fits, so far as we remember. Emma walked with a 
heavy limp, owing to a fall ; we do not remember 
which leg was the lame one. We think she had not 
a wooden leg or foot, but she certainly walked with 
a thump on one foot. She was a near neighbour of 
ours at Roundfield Place, and occasionally looked 
after us children, more or less, if our parents were 
out. She died probably twenty-five or thirty years 
ago ; no relatives left that we know of. 

(See sitting of April 12th, 1916.) 

Extract from letter dated Bournemouth, October 1st, 1915, 
from Mr. Wilkinson to J. A. H. 

Just when closing this epistle I felt as if some old 
man touched me ; rather a gentleman ; and he made 
me feel a bit like a parson. I cannot get any com- 
munication from him beyond " A. S. W.," whatever 
that means ; an impression I get is that you might 
have known this man some years ago. However, it 
is rather vague. When I tried on a separate paper 
I could only get the letters named. 

[The initials of the full name of Mr. Walkley, 
whose name was apparently groped after in my 
sitting of December 14th, 1914, were A. S. W. 
He was a parson, and was a " gentleman " ; died 
1900 ; had left this district some months before ; 



78 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

no relatives of his remained ; I have no reason 
to think that Mr. Wilkinson has ever heard of 
him normally. I heard Mr. Walkley preach 
nearly every Sunday for seventeen years, and 
he knew me well.] 



SITTING 4 

Friday, November 19th, 1915. Present, Mr. Frank 
Knight and medium. 

This was a sitting held by my friend Mr. Knight 
(whose experiences are described in my New Evidences 
in Psychical Research) on my behalf, at his home in 
another town, with the medium A. Wilkinson. What 
follows is a copy of Mr. Knight's notes. 

Preliminarily it may be mentioned that the glove 
used as a rapport-object had belonged to the Mrs. 
Napier elsewhere alluded to both in this book and in 
New Evidences. This is a pseudonym, and Mr. Knight 
did not know her real name, or anything about her 
except what had appeared in my book. She had died 
about a fortnight before the sitting — on November 
3rd, 1915. 

The letter mentioned was a letter of mine to Mr. 
Knight, received by him on the morning of the sitting. 
It contained no information about my relatives or 
friends. 

[W. placed glove to face.] 

Glove feels very cold and damp. A very calm, 
tranquil feeling, notwithstanding great weakness. Per- 
son had a lot of pain in her breast. Feel as if I must 
lie in a bed in extreme physical weakness : heart or 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 79 

chest. Very calm feeling, ready and prepared for 
everything. This is as someone gone to sleep and 
won't waken — as if her mind was slumbering. Not 
yet awake, not fully conscious ; asleep, not able to 
make any actual demonstration. 

The person who wore it had much pain about the 
heart. Doesn't appear to fully understand how to 
reach me. 

[Mrs. N. was tranquil and prepared. She had 
much pain in chest — growth behind breastbone — 
and became very weak owing to inability to take 
even fluid food for some weeks. She had an opera- 
tion for a breast tumour in 1913, and the doctors 
said it was cancer, but she was not told this. She 
also had obscure heart attacks — intermittency, 
without valvular disease — during the last five years 
or so.] 
[From the letter.] 

Impression of a man called Ishmael Hey. Elderly 
gent, some time back, rather big, not very old, old- 
fashioned in way of thinking. 

Someone called Sarah, deceased, age not obtain- 
able. 

[Ishmael Hey is unknown, but Ishmael Ogden 
was my grandmother Mary Hey's brother. I 
never knew him. Sarah may be either of two 
aunts of mine. Wilkinson has got a Sarah for me 
before.] 
[Glove.] 

Feel might be put in carriage and carried some 
distance. Of opinion the subject not able to com- 
municate. 

[Mrs. Napier lived and died over a hundred 
miles from where the sitting was taking place.] 



8o PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[Letter.] ^ 

Elderly gentleman, used to go to some Anglican 
church, something to do with that letter. 

Some woman, Helen, elderly, silk dress. Man, 
Torrington, connected with Helen. 

Rather a big man about sixty, corpulent, fresh- 
complexioned, about fifty-nine or sixty, good-looking. 
Had something to do with cloth some time, rolls of 
cloth about. 

[Helen and the man Torrington are evidently 
Mrs. and Mr. Torrington, whose names and de- 
scriptions Wilkinson gave me at my sitting of 
December 14th, 1914, two days after a visit of 
their daughter, whose influence seemed to have 
attracted them here. I feel sure that Wilkinson 
knows nothing of my association with their family. 
It is twenty years since any of them lived in 
Thornton. 

The corpulent man may be my father. The 
description is correct except that he was sixty-six 
at death. He had to do with " rolls of cloth " 
in his working days, and the allusion is a particu- 
larly apt and identifying one.] 
[Glove.] 

Get no further : feels like running against a stone 
wall. Wearer been more than ordinarily thoughtful ; 
serious type of mind. Will give anything to get further 
impressions. 

[I.e. I suppose he was expressing his strong 
wish to get something for me.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 81 

SITTING 5 

Wednesday, January 19th, 1916. Present, J. A. H. and 
medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

After ten minutes' talk about the war — Wilkinson 
was in London when two Zeppelin raids occurred — 
the medium said he had tried several times, at home. 
to get psychometry from the glove I sent him, oi 
messages from its late owner, but without success, 
Once he had a vision of flowers, and smelt flowers 
in general, but that was all. It was cornflowers that 
he saw. 

[She used to send me flowers nearly every week 
in summer. In fact, she sent me more flower 
than I have had from everybody else put together, 
probably ; so it is a characteristic touch. But I 
was not thinking of flowers when the medium said 
this. I do not know whether cornflowers were 
special favourites of hers ; she sent me sweet- 
peas and roses mostly, I think. It is roses that 
I should most naturally think of in connexion 
with her.] 
J. A. H. : She was fond of flowers. 

[Pause.] 
A. W. : There is an old man here, big, tall, well 
built, leans forward, bent with age. Nearly eighty. 
He has a stick. He is connected with you through 
your mother. Name, John. Been passed away a good 
many years. Good colour in his face, was perhaps out of 
doors a lot. Robust. He is quite a real presence to me. 
J. A. H. : My grandfather. [A. W. has got mes- 
sages from him before, with surname, so I was not 
giving anything away. It is my mother's father.] 

G 



82 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. : Indeed ! Some folks laugh when I say a 
John is here, because it fits in for nearly everybody ; 
but I have to say what I get. 
[Pause.] 
There's a man called Jonas, not very tall, but 
heavy. Old, but not so old as the other one. 

[Had him before ; probably a great-uncle of 

mine, Jonas Ogden, died at about eighty. He 

was not very heavy, though, but was well built.] 

[Pause.] 

There's somebody called Lewis. I am taken away 

somewhere, on a train. Country place ; up and down, 

rather steep. I feel I was taken to the Bradford 

Great Northern station, then a journey — not far, not 

many stations. I come to a house where there is 

someone linked up with you. Somebody there has 

been in trouble ; something which cannot be helped ; 

no remedy but Time. Not a flat place. Houses not 

close together — a bit distant from each other. I can't 

get into the house. Somebody there you will either 

see or hear of. Something interesting will come of it. 

You will see them, I think. 

[A Mr. Lewis once lived about a mile from 
here, dying in 1912. I knew him fairly well, 
meeting him mostly at the local Mechanics' In- 
stitute, where I played an occasional game of 
billiards with him. His widow left the town, soon 
after his death, and has since lived at a place 
which is on the Great Northern line from Brad- 
ford, not many stations away. It is a hilly place, 
as said, and there are many detached houses. But 
we are not in any close way " linked up " with Mrs. 
Lewis. I have not seen her for about twelve years. 
Mrs. Lewis has grieved greatly about her hus- 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 83 

band's death. It is very improbable that I shall 
see her. Wilkinson said I should either " see or 
hear of" the person.] 
[Pause.] 
There is a mind trying to get me into a house at 
that place. Something happened rather tragic, pain- 
ful. Somebody there who can't get it out of their 
mind. 

[Mr. Lewis died suddenly of heart disease. I 
believe it is very true that Mrs. Lewis cannot get 
the tragically sudden event out of her mind ; 
though he had been ill before, his disease was 
known, and she was aware that he might go suddenly. 
This Lewis evidence is very impressive to me. 
I had not been thinking about either Mr. or Mrs. 
Lewis. I have nothing in the house that ever 
belonged to either of them, and I do not believe 
that Wilkinson normally knows anything about 
them. Psychometry and mind-reading do not 
seem to me good explanations of this incident ; 
the spirit explanation seems much more reason- 
able. Mr. Lewis had few friends, and he knew 
me probably as well as anybody except one or two 
other local men, and I should quite expect him to 
give me a look in, if able, when a medium is here, 
though I had never thought of him before in this 
connexion till Wilkinson said " Lewis." I never 
talked to him about psychical things, for at that 
time I knew nothing about them ; so I have never 
associated him with the subject. 

Later ; September 13th, 1916. — To-day, after 
a chain of antecedently improbable events, Mrs. 
Lewis has been here for the first time, to tea, and 
I saw her for a few minutes. The medium's pre- 



84 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

diction, which at the time seemed wildly unlikely, 
is thus fulfilled. I cannot give all the details of 
events leading up to this, lest identities of living 
people should be disclosed ; but I may say that 
the initiative did not come from us — there seems 
to have been a Mr. Lewis agency impressing the 
mind of his widow.] 

[After a few minutes' silence, I gave A. W. a 
small silver box which had belonged to the glove- 
owner, and, before that, to a close male connexion 
of hers who predeceased her ; in fact, her hus- 
band.] 
A. W. : I feel rather buoyant — exhilarated — with 
this. Nothing depressing. The other person may 
have got away. [Perhaps in reference to the glove 
yielding nothing.] Sense of leaving a man behind, in 
the body, 

J. A. H. : She Avas a widow. 

A, W. : There seems a man in the case. 

J. A. H. : The box belonged to her husband. 

[Pause.] 
A. W. : Have you known somebody called Tranter ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : A woman called Tranter. Do you know any 
Percy Tranter ? 
J. A. H. : No. 

[Not striking, but it is perhaps worth noting 
that a few days before the sitting we had a caller, 
a cousin's wife, who calls very rarely — not once 
a year — and who knew the Tranters better than 
we did. They lived at a farm next my cousin's, 
but are no longer there. It has happened before, 
more than once, that spirits connected with some 
recent caller have purported to turn up.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 85 

A. W, : You never hear raps, perhaps ? 

J. A. H. : No. 

A. W. : There is something I can't break through, 
like a net. [Handling glove and box abstractedly.] 
Have you a friend called Drayton ? 

J. A. H. : I know some Draytons. 

A. W. : You will have a visitor called Drayton. He 
has to do with some kind of work that smells funny. 
Nothing to do with this box. 

[Unrecognized. I have no regular Drayton 
visitors. But I think this is a misinterpreted fore- 
gleam of what follows. The " visitor " was coming 
in the spirit, not in the body.] 

There is a very old man — he has a job to stand up. 
Tottering with age. There are two old men together ; 
neither of the men I saw before. Little, bent with age, 
white front ; another little old man with him. Brothers 
or friends, Henry and Robert. Don't know whether 
they were brothers or not. Henry is older than the 
other. They knew each other very well. Robert's 
face is smoother, not so lined. They are chums. 
Perhaps brothers. Robert predeceased the other. 
I don't think Henry has been long gone. Somebody 
called Whitley is connected with Henry ; lives a 
long way from here. A woman, not well ; belongs 
to Henry. She is called Whitley. She has some- 
thing belonging to the old man. He liked his own 
way ; a bit dogmatic. Robert was rather milder. 
Henry had a lot of his own way. He is very 
much surprised about things now. Robert was a 
bit younger ; nice old man ; jolly. They had lots 
in common, though there was great difference. Per- 
haps difference in position. They're alike now in that 
respect. 



86 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[I think the last sentence was mostly W.'s 
normal mind, for as he said it he looked up at me 
and smiled, momentarily losing his " absent " 
manner. When getting impressions he seems to 
be looking at nothing in particular, though he 
sometimes locates a spirit if it is specially clear. 
While waiting for impressions, he often puts his 
hand over his eyes, elbow on chair-arm. 

Except that they were not " little " when I 
knew them — though they probably became more 
shrunken later — all this is exactly true of Henry 
Drayton and Robert P. Leather. They were 
brothers-in-law, great chums, and lived near each 
other. Mr. Drayton died in 1914, November 29th, 
aged eighty-nine ; Mr. Leather died February 22nd, 
1909, aged eighty-four. It is a rather notable 
thing that though Mr. Drayton had five daughters, 
the only one we have much of a link with is Mrs. 
Whitley, for her husband's uncle married my 
great-aunt. If Mr. Drayton were here, thinking 
about my family in general and his own daughters, 
it would be Mrs. Whitley he would think of more 
particularly ; though this fact, and the connexion 
by marriage, did not occur to me until after the 
sitting. 

The description of Mr. Drayton's salient points 
of character is excellent. He was rather impetu- 
ous and masterful ; a good man, but certainly his 
position enabled him to have a great deal of " his 
own way." 

Mr. Leather has been described and named as 
" Leather — perhaps Robert," by Mr. Wilkinson 
before, and at a sitting on December 14th, 1914, 
he told me, referring to an impression about 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 87 

which he had written me from Bournemouth on 
November 18th, 1914, that he had felt that the 
man named Parrbury was waiting about for an 
old friend to pass over. Mr. Leather's name was 
Robert Parberry Leather, but few people knew 
his second name ; I didn't, or I had forgotten it, 
and had to make inquiries. At the time of the 
medium's impression, Mr. Drayton was dying of 
senile decay, passing away eleven days afterwards, 
Mr. Leather was a " nice old man, jolly," as said; 
he was less well off than Mr. Drayton.] 

[A. W. handles silver box again, trying hard, 
seeming to listen or feel interiorly very intently. 
Complete failure.] 
J. A. H. : Better put it down ; she'll come when she 
can. Try for some more from Robert and Henry. 
[Pause.] 
A. W. : Henry had a portrait of old Mr. Gladstone, 
the statesman. I think he must have had one in 
his house. 

J. A. H. : Very likely. 

A. W. : Robert has brought him. I think Henry 
has not manifested here before. 

[Mr. Drayton was a Liberal M.P. for a good 
many years, retiring in 1892 owing to iJl-health. 
He was a vigorous Gladstonian. 

Correct that he had not manifested here be- 
fore. Mr. Leather seems to wish to convince me 
of survival ; he brought an " Elias Sidney " to 
my sitting of January 15th, 1915 ; to the best of 
my recollection I had never heard the name before, 
but after inquiries in various quarters I learned 
that " Elias Sidney " had lived a few miles away, 
and had been a political crony of Mr. Leather's. 



88 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

We have nothing in the house that could serve 
as psychometric link — no object that had belonged 
to either Mr. Leather or Mr. Drayton — and, of 
course, neither of them ever lived here. 

As to the medium's normal knowledge of these 
two men, I have no reason to think that he knows 
anything except what I have told him ; and this 
does not include anything about their characters 
or the exact shade of intimacy or relationship, 
which are hit off so well. Both were business men 
who retired young, both lost their wives early, and 
for half a century they were close chums, neither 
of them having any other friend anything near so 
intimate. Strictly speaking, the evidentiality of 
this part of the sitting is not high, because they 
were well-known men and because the medium 
knew something of Mr. Leather before. But it is 
worth mentioning that he said, after my remarks 
about them, that he had no previous knowledge 
of them — " certainly not of Mr. Drayton." He 
probably remembered dimly that the name Leather 
had appeared at an earlier sitting, for it was 
new to him as a name, and suggested only boots, 
etc. I do not think he connected the Robert of 
this sitting with the Leather of an earlier one. 
In fact, Mr. Leather seems to have purposely 
given different parts of his name on different 
occasions, for when he impressed the medium 
at Bournemouth he gave the first two names 
(" Parrbury " and perhaps " Robert "), and "Wil- 
kinson thought the Parrbury was a surname, and 
did not connect it with Mr. Leather. 

However, the other incidents are evidentially 
stronger, being entirely new. Also Mr. Lewis was 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 89 

a less well-known man, and I am sure I had never 
mentioned him to the medium.] 
Things seemed to be tailing off, so I said, as en- 
couragement : 

J. A. H. : It was very good about those two old 
men. Robert is Robert Leather, whom you have 
named and described here before ; Henry is Henry 
Drayton, a close friend of his ; the woman called 
Whitley is his daughter. 

A. W. : I saw those two old men so clearly that I 
could recognize their portraits if I saw them. Shan't 
remember them long ; shall have forgotten them 
to-morrow. 

[Unfortunately, I had no portraits of them at 

hand, or I would have tried tests like Sir Oliver 

Lodge's with Mrs. Piper in the " waking stage." 

Probably, indeed, there was no portrait of Mr. 

Drayton in the house ; indeed, I do not think we 

have a photograph of either of them.] 

Sitting ended. Talked about war again. W, very 

anxious, wondering whether to attest. He is about 

thirty-eight, but his sight will certainly exempt him. 

Left at 3.40 p.m. to catch 3.48 train. (He had arrived 

at 2.30.) 



SITTING 6 

Thursday, February 17th, 1916. Present, J, A. H. and 
medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

The medium arrived at 2.25 p.m., and we talked 
about the weather, his recent tours, and the like. I 
mentioned no relatives or friends of mine. In about 
ten minutes he began to get impressions : ^«*^ 



go PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. : I feel a bodily presence here, someone in the 
body, a big, tall man, who is coming to take leave of 
you. This is a presentiment. The man is very cheer- 
ful, not in trouble, not caring. 

[Improbable : I know of no friend going away, 
unless a lieutenant friend is ordered abroad, in 
which case he might come to say good-bye. He 
is 6 ft. 2 in., and powerfully built.] 

[Later : March 1st. A cousin called to say a 
cheerful good-bye last night. He joins his regi- 
ment to-day. He is tallish, but not very big- 
bodied.] 
A. W, : There is a woman just behind you, pale, 
pinched, a bit drawn at the mouth, not very tall. Not 
an old woman, but over sixty, maybe. A delicate 
woman, very pale. Name, Mary. I have a feeling 
that she has been gone a long time — seventeen or 
eighteen years. 

[My mother, Mary Hill, has been named and 
described before, with more correct details. She 
died twenty-nine years ago, aged fifty-four. She 
was pale, but not very delicate.] 
A. W. : There is a young man, tall, about twenty 
years old, standing by your coat [hung on hook in 
Shannon cabinet]. No hair on his face, high forehead, 
long face. Not quite a man, about twenty. Rather 
dark, no colour. [Unrecognized.] 
A. W. : Do you know any Driver ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. [Slightly, but no deceased Drivers.] 
A. W. : That young man has not been gone long. 

[Pause.] 
A. W. : You may hear of a funeral of somebody soon ; 
I see a funeral party. A woman, who will die soon ; 
it is nearly up to you. Somebody old. There is a 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 91 

man here with a round soft hat, a felt hat, like a parson ; 
grey ; been a parson. He is about here waiting for 
somebody. He is a bit vague ; seems to be looking 
through gauze or fog. 

[This is good. A Mrs. Walkley, widow of a 
former local minister, died on February 15th, and 
the funeral is to-day, February 18th. She was 
eighty-two and has been sinking gradually. Mr. 
Walkley and family left here in 1900, and he died 
on November 16th of that year. He usually wore 
a soft, felt, clerical hat, as described. After his 
death his widow lived mostly in London, but for 
the last year or two she has lived with relatives 
about six miles from here, and twelve from where 
the medium lives. They are quiet-living people, 
not prominent in any way ; and they have no 
association with spiritualism. I feel sure that 
Mr. Wilkinson had no knowledge of them, for though 
he once got an impression that I " had known 
some people called Walker," which I said was true 
if the name were Walkley, I gave no details. See 
sitting of December 14th, 1914, and A. W.'s letter 
of October 1st, 1915, pp. 65, 77.] 
A. W. : If I saw a photo of that young man I should 
know him. That old woman will die soon. 
J. A. H. : She is dead now. 

A. W. : Indeed ! It is somebody very old and feeble, 
over eighty ; been going gradually. 

That young man, his mother was related to your 
mother. He hasn't been gone long. He has a woman 
with him, whose form is less ; age sixty or sixty-three, 
rather sparely built, hair smooth, oval face, rather 
fragile. Her dress shines. She has gone since him. 
[Unrecognized.] 



92 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

I wish I could get that young man's name. I am 
interested. He looks thoughtful. Not more than 
twenty. Have you known somebody who lived at 
Manchester ? 

J. A. H. : I don't think so. 

A. W. : I am taken to Manchester with some young 
man, to a suburban place outside Manchester, west of 
Manchester. Do you know anything of Hermiston ? 
[Sounded like that : the name is unknown to me.] 

J. A. H. : No. 

A. W. : There's somebody who must have lived at 
Manchester, but must have passed away. 

I am mixed up with this young man with the woman 
with him. Was your mother's name Mary ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : That young man is related to you through 
her. 

There is a man with a red face — a big, fleshy man. 
He wore a kind of apron, a heavy apron, to cover his 
clothes. May have worn it at his work. 

J. A. H. : That's right. Any name ? 

A. W. [After pause] : That young man is nearer 
you. You must have known him. As he approaches 
you there are reddish lines reaching out to you from 
him. These perhaps indicate relationship. He has 
not been before. 
[Pause.] 

That young man's surname begins with H, but it 
isn't Hill. He seems to be making great efforts to tell 
me more, but I can't get it. Perhaps he will do better 
next time. He is a big, tall young man. Died perhaps 
of consumption. That woman that I saw, there is a 
tall old man with her ; eighty, I should think ; very 
old man. She is standing by him ; standing under 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 93 

his arm so to speak. [Medium held his arm straight 
out sidewise.] There's a lot all together in a group. 
He looks weather-beaten in his face ; looks hearty. 
Somebody belonging to her. 

[My mother and her father, probably, both 
described and named before. He died at eighty- 
one, after a very healthy life. Was tall and 
ruddy-faced.] 
You'll excuse me. [Goes over to my coat and sits 
on stool near it.] 

The form of that young man was built up here. 
I wish I could get more from him. He died after a 
quick consumption. He belongs to your family. 
Can't get any more. [Goes back to his chair.] 

[Pause.] 
There is some man here — sixty-five or sixty- six. 
He makes me feel big and corpulent. James, or Ban- 
nister, perhaps another name. 

J. A. H. : Right for several folk. 

[Medium has named Mary Bannister before — 
maiden name of paternal grandmother of my 
father, Bannister Hill, whose name also I think 
W. knows. Also a James Bannister has been men- 
tioned as a remote ancestor, probably true, but I 
cannot verify. My father was stout in middle life.] 
A. W. : Makes me feel weighty. Same man who 
had the apron on. He is rolling something over : pull- 
ing cloth over. Might be a tailor, looking cloth over. 
But tailors don't wear aprons. Did somebody pass 
away in 1897 ? 

J. A. H. : Very nearly then, but not quite. I know 
who it is. 

A. W. : I have a feeling of eighteen or nineteen 
years back. 



94 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

J. A. H. : Right. I want to hear from him. Are 
they feeling all right and happy over there ? 

A. W. : I never get any other feeling from them. 
Never anything unpleasant or uncanny, except some- 
times when I feel the disease they died of. 

Have you had any intimation from the woman of 
the glove ? 

[See previous sittings.] 
J. A. H. : No ; I wish we could hear from her. 
[Pause.] 

[The red-faced, stout man with an " apron " 
on (really a " checker brat " or overall), is my 
father, Bannister Hill ; and the pulling over 
of cloth is about the best possible identifying 
touch. As Wilkinson said this he made move- 
ments with his hands exactly reproducing the 
unmistakable hand and finger movements em- 
ployed in throwing over the " flipes " of a piece 
of cloth when the taker-in is examining it for 
weaving-faults. He died in October, 1898, aged 
sixty- six. 

See Sitting 4, November 19th, 1915, p. 80.] 
A. W. : This big man with the full face must have 
known a man named Charlton, a younger man. This 
man is just waking up. He didn't quite believe he 
was dead. I feel that he would be an impulsive man. 
He would swear when things went wrong. Hot- 
headed. Middle life. A proud man. He has been 
wandering about a while. Been gone some time. 
[Pause.] 
His influence is very authoritative. Almost an 
arrogant man in some ways. 

There's somebody in the body that he wants to 
approach — a woman. His object is to reach her. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 95 

J. A. H. : What does he want doing about her ? 

[No answer.] 
A. W. : He had money. He has not manifested here 
before. He was one who would want to rush through 
fire and water to get at what he wanted. 

He had a kind of knowledge of the surroundings. 
[A Mr. Charlton, of this neighbourhood, died 
a few years ago. The description is correct, 
though " middle life " is perhaps a little too 
young. I think he would be about sixty ; but 
he was spare and active until his last illness, and 
did not look his age. He was rather impulsive 
and on occasion profane ; but a very good sort. 
His widow is left rather lonely. I never knew 
him " to speak to," but probably he knew me by 
sight, as I knew him. 

He was younger than my father, and was 
known to him, as said.] 
A. W. : Have you known someone named Ed- 
mund ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. [Thinking of Edmund Stott, local 
draper who died a few years ago.] 

A. W. : Man of seventy or seventy-three, this Ed- 
mund. Did not die about here ; I am taken away. 
He went to Morecambe. Might have lived at More- 
cambe. Might have lived or died there. Tall, fairly 
straight, full beard and on cheeks, big nose, well- 
dressed, black, very tidy. Name Edmund, biggish- 
bodied man, good physique. 

[Would fit Edmund Stott, except that I feel 
sure he died at home.] 
[Pause.] 
A. W. : I smell a smell of brewing — beer. Malt, as 
if you were passing a brewery. A nice smell. But it's 



96 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

quite different from those flowers. [Pointing to flowers 
on the table.] It's malt. 

[W. looked puzzled, so I helped a little.] 
J. A. H. : No brewers among my relatives, but there 
is a connexion between brewing and Mr. Charlton. 
[He was associated with a brewery company.] 
A. W. : That Charlton's influence won't leave me. 
He knew somebody called William. It is a bit frag- 
mentary, but they did not just agree about something. 
There is a divergence of opinion. Whether it is re- 
ligion, I don't know. He has a big, thick stick ; not 
a walking-stick — it is too thick. He has a very light- 
coloured suit on, kind of sporting outfit. He is a 
new influence, not manifested here before. Very 
impulsive. [Clairvoyance ended here. I told him 
nothing as to how far he had been correct.] 

[Mr. Charlton and a relative of mine named 
William knew each other rather well. I don't 
know of any disagreement between them, but in 
religion and politics they were perhaps rather far 
apart. Mr. Charlton liked very light-coloured suits 
for summer, usually light grey tweeds. The thick 
stick is unrecognized, though I have an impression 
that I have seen him with fishing tackle, so it may 
be a jointed rod, folded up. It is correct that this 
is his first appearance at a sitting of mine. I 
have no reason to think that Wilkinson had 
ever heard of him, for he lived a very retired 
life. 

Note : April 27th, 1916. — I have to-day asked 
my relative, and he says that Mr. Charlton and 
he never discussed politics or religion, and never 
disagreed about anything in conversation. He 
liked Mr. Charlton, and got on excellently with 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 97 

him. But they met only casually, usually in tram- 
cars. See ante, pp. 30-33, for further comment.] 

Note: March 7th, 1916. — To-night's local papers 
announce the death of Mr. Charlton's younger brother. 
He " had not been well for some time," and had been 
to London to see a specialist a week before his death. 
I knew of his existence, but had not heard he was ill ; 
in fact, I had not heard him mentioned for some years. 
I did not know him, even by sight. He lived in another 
town, fifteen miles away, and twenty from where 
Wilkinson lives. I do not think the latter ever visits 
that particular small town, and I do not think he knew 
anything of either of the two brothers. 

It looks as if Mr. Charlton had come to meet his 
brother, as Mr. Leather came to meet his friend Dray- 
ton, and as Mr. Walkley came to meet his widow. 

Note : March 19th, 1916. — In the early part of this 
sitting there is a reference to some " Driver " ; later, 
a description of an Edmund, which fits Edmund Stott, 
though the latter died at home. In my sitting of 
December 14th, 1914 [p. 66], there was said, " Some 
man named Driver here." (Unrecognized.) 

Yesterday, March 18th, 1916, after re-reading these 
reports, I for the first time associated the Driver and 
the Edmund, and dimly thought the name was real. 
After reflection I felt almost, but not quite, sure that 
an Edmund Driver had tenanted a local hotel, leaving 
about twenty years ago. On inquiry I find that this 
is so ; but I cannot ascertain where he died. Either 
his widow and family moved soon after his death, or 
they went before. I am making inquiry, also about 
his personal appearance, of which I remember nothing. 

In those days there was a malt-kiln behind and 
belonging to that hotel, so the malt smell may refer 

H 



98 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

to Edmund, not to Mr. Charlton. The kiln has long 
been done away with, and there is now a laundry there. 

Note : March 26th, 1916. — I have asked a friend 
to-day about Edmund Driver, whom he remembers 
well. He says the description fits E. D. much more 
closely than E. Stott. He could not be very sure about 
a specially large nose, but all the other details are 
markedly correct, except that he feels sure E. D. died 
at the hotel here, not at Morecambe. (See pp. 43-47 
for further details.) 

My informant says that in Driver's time the owners 
brewed in the adjoining building, which was afterwards 
a malt-kiln and is now a laundry. The smell of malt 
and brewing seems therefore specially applicable to 
Edmund Driver ; he was associated with these things 
much more closely than Mr. Charlton was, the latter 
having no immediate personal touch with them. 



SITTING 7 

Wednesday, April 12th, 1916. Present, J. A. H. and 
medium {Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

W. arrived 2.25 p.m., and we talked about the 
war, the weather, and his influenza and neuralgia, 
which have kept him at home the last few weeks. He 
is still not looking well, and I rather thought the sitting 
was going to be a blank, for he got no clairvoyance 
till 2.55. 

Then: 

A. W. : There is a little old woman at the back 
of you. Now she comes by the bedside. She has a 
lace thing round her shoulders ; black, a lacy thing. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 99 

There is also something on her head, something which 
comes down at the sides. A rather slim little woman ; 
big nose. I can see her face plainly. No colour. A 
very old woman. The lace thing makes her look 
dressy. Something white at front of her neck. 

[Good for my grandmother Hey, who has been 

described by A. W. before. I should hardly call 

her slim, though. But she was not stout — was 

spare and active, but average breadth of shoulder, 

I should say. The big nose and the cap with sides, 

and I think the black lace shawl, are exactly true.] 

There is somebody called Jonas connected with her. 

She was a dainty woman in dress and manner ; not 

fussy, but dainty. I have an impression of a Jonas 

connected with her. That thing about her head is 

silk ; a good quality thing. A very old person, but 

not very drawn in features. Moves slowly at the side 

of the bed. She is some time back. 

[All true. She had a brother Jonas, named 
and described before. She died in 1890, aged 
eighty- one.] 
Have you known somebody named Jowett ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. I wish you could get something 
about a Jowett you saw here before. I can't quite 
make out who it was. [See sitting of January 15th, 
1915, p. 69.] 
[Pause.] 

A. W. : There is some woman named Betty Tranter. 
Some Tranter connected with this Betty. Somebody 
connected with your family some years back. Betty 
Tranter. Biggish woman. Good way back. 
Have you known anybody named Verity ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 
A. W. : I don't know whether it is a surname or 



ioo PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

not. You may not have known him intimately. It 
is some way back. A tallish, biggish man. Betty is 
connected with him. 

J. A. H. : Quite right, I knew a Verity Tranter. 
Betty is perhaps his wife. I don't know her name. 

A. W. : He was a strong personality. Betty is con- 
nected with him, and I think they know your people. 
Verity is a funny name — I have never known or heard 
of anybody called that. I think he would leave some 
money and there was trouble about it. Perhaps 
litigation. Not lately, but there was trouble about 
something he left behind. 

[Verity Tranter was a local butcher and farmer, 
who died about a dozen years ago. I called some- 
times to order meat, but usually saw his wife. I 
doubt whether I ever had any talk with him, but I 
knew him well by sight, as he no doubt knew me ; for 
he was probably often in the shop when I passed. 
He was a big, strong man. I think his wife is 
alive, but they have left this district and I do 
not know where they are, but will try to ascer- 
tain. I doubt whether he left much money. I 
know of no litigation or trouble, but will try to 
find out. See sitting of January 19th, 1916 (p. 84), 
for an apparent Tranter attempt. 

Note: October 9th, 1916.— I find that there 
may be a slight family connexion ; there was a 
Betty Tranter nearly a hundred years ago, and 
her sister married a Hey who was probably 
related to my mother. I find also that there is 
some relevance in the statement about money- 
disputes in relation to Verity Tranter.] 
Did you ever know a woman with a wood leg ? 
Tall, elderly ; a wood foot or leg. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 101 

J. A. H. : I think I know who it is. Can you get 
her name ? She has been before. 

A. W. I could hear the thud on the floor. [W. 
here got up and limped about, thudding with his right 
foot.] You would know this woman with the leg when 
you were a boy. She has been gone on many years. I 
feel as if she takes me somewhere where she lived. It 
is a local connexion ; I don't get far away. 

[Probably Emma Steeton. See my sitting of 
January 15th, 1915, pp. 70, 73, 77. She lived 
about half a mile from here. It is about thirty 
years since she died, I should think.] 
Have you had a friend named Burroughs ? 
J. A. H, : No, I think not. 

[Note : February 23rd, 1917. — But the name 
was familiar to me, and at a sitting held while 
these sheets were going through the press there 
were further developments indicating, though 
not yet very clearly, a family very well known 
to us.] 

It isn't that woman's name, I think. 
Somebody called Burns ; I get a name Burns. 
These names come into my head. 

J. A. H. : That may be right ; I have known some 
Burnses. 

A. W. : Burns and Burroughs. 

This woman with the wood leg must have had a 
good voice and could sing. She is showing me some 
hymn-books ; she was interested in hymn-books and 
music. 

[No recollection, but possible enough. She 
was a widow, poor, lived alone in a cottage near 
our then home. She attended the Wesleyan 
Chapel a couple of hundred yards from her home. 



102 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

The hymn-books may be a reference to that, rather 
than to music ; as in the Moses Young incident in 
sitting of January 15th, 1915, pp. 68, 69.] 
Have you ever known anybody called Helen 
Torrington ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : Somebody — a man — is in trouble. 
She is a middle-aged woman, full figure. I call 
them middle-aged up to sixty or so ; she might be 
sixty-four. Helen (emphasizing the aspirate). Be- 
gins with H. A man away from here is in trouble. 
She draws me in contact with some man away from 
here. He has a lot of care, and there is some cause 
for alarm. There is going to be trouble about this 
man in the body. Has this woman a son, away from 
here ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. He is a friend of mine. 
A. W. : Is he in trouble ? 
J. A. H. : Well, trade is bad. 

A. W. : He is intending doing something which he 
ought not to do. He is businesslike. There is some- 
thing looming over him which is not good. 
J. A. H. : Is there anything we can do ? 
A. W. : He should hold on ; stick to it. He should 
hold on to whatever it is, tenaciously. There has been 
trouble in his mind. As if he was going to get quit of 
it. Wherever he is it is a very busy place ; lots of 
work. An atmosphere that is exciting and busy. That 
woman thinks a great deal of this man. Thought a lot 
of him when living, too. 

[Extremely appropriate to an old friend of 
mine, who has lived in America since 1901. His 
business has suffered owing to the war, and he has 
had great trouble — bereavement, etc. — during the 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 103 

last few years. I have no reason to think that 
A. W. has any normally- acquired knowledge of 
him or his family. Mrs. Torrington was named, 
and said to be present, at my sitting of December 
14th, 1914 (p. 62), but I said nothing except that 
I knew who it was. See also p. 80. 

Later : I sent the message, and it is applicable. 
He was thinking of relinquishing certain business 
enterprises. I think he has now decided to 
" stick." The prediction of trouble looming over 
him was correct in another way, for, soon after 
the date of the sitting, his wife was seriously ill. 
Operation was proposed, but the doctors disagreed 
as to the ailment, so their advice was disregarded 
and the patient recovered. It may be that the 
advice to "hold on" was in reference to this.] 
[Pause.] 
I haven't seen that young man who came before. 

[See last sitting, February 17th, 1916.] 
J. A. H. : I wish he would come. 
A. W. : Before I started off to come here I saw an 
apparition of a man, and he seemed to come in front 
of me. It was that man named Verity. I never heard 
of such a man before. Was he a Churchman ? 
J. A. PI. : Probably, if he was anything. 
Clairvoyance ended. I asked A. W. if the name 
" Hermiston " was known to him — see sitting of 
February 17th, 1916, p. 92 — and he said, " No, but there 
is an Urmston near Manchester, between there and 
Warrington. I have never got off there, and know it 
only by seeing it from the train. A man lives there 
who used to live at Ovenden, near Halifax. . . ." 
Wilkinson gave me this gentleman's name, and the 
surname is the same as that of some of my relatives 



io4 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

on my mother's side. I doubt whether he can be a 
connexion, but, if he is, there is sense in the mention 
of Hermiston (for Urmston, which the medium no 
doubt Said, but which, being unknown to me, was 
heard as Hermiston, this name — a fictitious one, I 
think — being familiar to me in Stevenson's Weir of 
Hermiston). 

After desultory talk, Wilkinson left at 3.35. 

The foregoing was written on Thursday, April 13th, 
1916 ; the report part being copied from my verbatim 
shorthand notes taken at the time. 



SITTING 8 

Wednesday, April 19th, 1916. Present, J, A. II. and 
medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

Mr. Wilkinson arrived at 2.25 p.m. After pre- 
liminary remarks about the weather, he said : 

Before I came, while I was writing a letter, I saw 
a medium- sized woman, with very white hair. An 
apparition, you know. She was carrying a very big 
book, heavily bound, with gilt edges ; almost as heavy 
as she could carry. I couldn't see the lettering on it ; 
it might be a Bible or a big history-book, or something 
like that. I couldn't tell who she was. 

J. A. H. : Perhaps somebody who is coming here 
this afternoon, as in the case of that man last time. 

A. W. : That's what I thought ; that's why I men- 
tion it. 

[But I don't know that it had any special appro- 
priateness to any of those who were afterwards 
described.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 105 

J. A. H. : Here is another glove which belonged to 
that friend of mine. [Giving it to him.] 

A. W. [after handling it for about a minute] : I 
can see a chapel. There is a gallery ; I feel I am in 
the gallery, looking down into the area. I can see 
the area ; it is biggish, quite a large place. There is 
a man in the pulpit, a tallish man with a big nose and 
long face. He is preaching. It passes before me so 
plainly. 

I am in the area of the chapel, at the back. Part of 
the gallery is over my head. This has come with the 
glove. There are lots of people in that place. Where- 
ever can that be, I wonder ? 

[I did not speak, being busy getting it all 

down. Wilkinson had reeled this off at unusual 

speed and with great conviction.] 

That man in the pulpit has a big nose. He isn't a 

big man, though fairly talh Where this woman tries 

to take me is not far in from the door of the church. 

Some place where she usually sat. 

[Mrs. Napier was a Churchwoman. I have no 
knowledge as to what part of the church she sat 
in. It is perhaps noteworthy that in the parcel 
which she had wrapped up for me a few weeks 
before her death, and from which I took this glove, 
there was the prayer-book which she had habitually 
used for some time, though Wilkinson did not 
see it. Whether it was psychometry or impres- 
sions from her own surviving mind, the vision of 
the church was appropriate, I will try to ascer- 
tain where she sat, and the appearance of the 
usual preacher or preachers.] 
This person must have been delicate for a long time. 
Stomach bad. Could not take heavy foods. 



io6 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[Very true ; she practically starved to death, 
owing to some growth. Not even fluid food 
possible for weeks before the end.] 

I feel I am going on a long road. I have come to a 
house. It is not raised up like this one ; it is more 
on the level as I enter it. I can see a clock and a 
pier-glass, gilt with embellished frame. A heavy 
clock on the mantel. 

I am going upstairs, into a bedroom. I see a pic- 
ture on the wall ; a picture of a tall or tallish woman. 

How long have you had this glove ? 

J. A. H. : About five months. [Six, I afterwards 
reckoned up.] 

A. W. : You don't know if this woman had a gold 
brooch, oblong shape, with a stone in it ? 

J. A. H. : I don't know. 

A. W. : I am impressed to put my hand here [front 
of neck], I feel a brooch with a hard stone. She 
would be rather partial to this brooch ; would only wear 
it occasionally. She had a bad stomach. 

That picture is not a painted picture ; it is an 
engraving — steel engraving, I expect. It looks like a 
woman. Not so big a room as this. [Will try to ascer- 
tain about picture, etc.] She must have been a thin 
person. [Latterly, yes, but not when well.] Sharp, 
quick, nervy, somewhat impulsive manner. Whoever 
this person liked, she would like intensely. [True and 
characteristic] She must have been very ill with the 
stomach. 

J. A. H. : Yes, she was. 

A. W. : Have you known a woman who kept a school ? 
Middle-aged, or a bit over. Rather spare and lady- 
like. She had children to deal with. 

J. A. H. : Yes, I have known several. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 107 

A. W. : She has a black dress — I think it is silk, 
trimmed with black and white figured stuff. Her hair 
is a little wiry, and sticks out at the sides. Have you 
known somebody named Hanson ? She must have 
been at a school ; she is holding up a book like a copy- 
book. Connected with a school. 

J. A. H. : She has been before. 

A. W. : Has she ? I didn't remember that. 

J A. H. : I wish we could- make out who she is. 
Apparently it is someone who has known me. I 
wonder where she was. 

A. W. : She lived not far away from here, I think. 
I feel linked up locally. It may be that somebody 
belonging to her has been known to you. 

Hannah or Annie Hanson. Some time back. It 
is some time since she died. She has nothing to do 
with this glove [which A. W. had put down and now 
picked up again]. Do you know if she has a daughter ? 
[I think the glove-owner was meant.] 

J. A. H. : No, she had no children. 

A. W. : There is some young woman connected with 
this glove, twenty-two or twenty-three. Somebody 
very jolly and gay, cheerful. 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : I feel a cheerfulness. She is living, and 
was about this woman. She did something for her. 
She is a very nice, refined person. Tactful : the right 
person. Quite young : lot younger than me. 

[Probably true or fairly so of Mrs. Napier's sister, 
who lived with her and did much for her in her 
illness. But she is a little more than twenty-three, I 
think : perhaps thirty. Wilkinson is thirty- eight.] 

This woman had some kind of thing that she had 
worked, to put on her. Perhaps a dressing-gown. It 



ioS PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

is white or nearly white, with fancy work, stitched. 
She made it with her own fingers, and would be sewing 
at it for some time. White flannel or some fine material, 
not cotton or linen, I think. All the front is worked 
very prettily. 

I feel that she had found something before she was 
very ill, something that had made her very pleased 
and gratified, as if something had happened, quite 
unusual, very pleasant to her, and it had continued 
with her, continued to be a pleasure to her. Perhaps 
she had some money left, but I am only guessing that, 
from the feeling. 

[And he said it hesitatingly, as if he had a 

feeling that it was a wrong guess. It is true that 

she had a good income left by her husband, but 

I doubt whether this is what was meant. I am 

not sure, but I think she may be meaning the 

knowledge of psychical matters and literature, 

which she obtained from 1905 onwards, and 

which I know was a great help and comfort and 

pleasure to her, explaining certain experiences of 

her own. I know nothing of the fancy-work thing, 

but will inquire.] 

This lady who was ill was very fond of this young 

woman. Perhaps the white thing was something she 

gave her. Perhaps some under-garment. 

There is a man called Joseph across the room there 
— a faint outline. A very big man, corpulent, broad, 
full features, a little beard on the chin, not much on 
the cheeks. Fresh colour. Not bald, but hair thin 
and grey. A very healthy man. Grey clothes. I can 
see his nose and the colour in his face. About sixty or 
sixty-two. 

[Unrecognized : but see later.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 109 

Have you known somebody called Yewton ? I 
am in a square yard. I can smell hay. Yewton. 

J. A. H. : Yewton is a farm. [Here I remembered 
that a Joseph West once lived there, before my time. 
Will inquire about his appearance.] 

A. W. : Indeed. I once knew a Mr. Yewton, but I 
never heard of a place of that name. 

[He has, but has probably forgotten ; for he 
got the name before, at my sitting of January 
15th, 1915, and I told him it was a farm. It has 
not been mentioned since. See pp. 72, 73.] 

The stout man has brought that farm. He looks 
like a farmer. His cheeks were as red as an apple. 
They quite shone. 

I have a feeling I might write [i.e. automatically ; 
takes paper and pencil]. 

You don't know anybody called John Thomas 
Hanson ? [Writes something, afterwards found to be 
this name. The John is quite different from Wilkin- 
son's writing ; the Thomas is a mixture ; and Hanson 
is in his own hand.] 

J. A. H. : No, I don't remember. 

A. W. : He must be somebody connected with that 
woman Hanson. 

Do you know if something tragic happened at 
Yewton ? A long time back. 

J. A. H. : I don't know, but I can find out. 

A. W. : I think something happened there a long 
time back. 

A lot of names come into my mind, and they may 
mean nothing. 

J. A. H. : Tell me anything that comes, because 
sometimes it turns out right, though I may not recog- 
nize it at the time. 



no PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. : Well, there seems to be somebody called 
Armitage. Tallish, young. I can't see his head or 
face, but he seems tall. About thirty. 
J. A. H. : I think he has been before. 
A. W. : I smell something — wool, oily stuff. He 
might work among wool. 

[I thought at first of Arthur Armitage, whom 
Wilkinson named at sitting of July 21st, 1914, 
and whom I knew slightly. He died about 1902. 
But I think he worked mostly in his father's shop, 
though I believe he worked in a weaving or spinning 
mill occasionally. See p. 60.] 
Have you had something to do with a man in 
middle life, a good-looking man, called Lethbridge ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : This man is in the body. You might be 
having a money transaction with him. 
J. A. H. : Very likely. 

A. W. : A man all about money ; well-dressed ; been 
in his business a long time. 

J. A. H. : I know him. Who has come connected 
with him ? 

A. W. : Have you been about him lately ? 
J. A. H. : No. It may be a prediction. 
A. W. : I think he studies finance a lot. There is 
somebody belonging to you that knows him better than 
you do, perhaps. Has this man been married twice ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. Has his first wife come ? 
A. W. : I don't know. 

[A Mr. Lethbridge is a bank manager, and has 
had that position for many years — twenty or more. 
I anticipate no direct financial transaction with 
him, but I have recently been indirectly associated 
with him, for the first time, in a matter concerning 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS m 

finance. His first wife knew me slightly, as does 
also his second. I have no reason to believe that 
the medium has ever heard of him.] 
It's very funny — I can't get away from that school. 
At that farm place, a very long time since, some 
man lost his life. They are trying to show me some- 
thing. Some old person would be required to tell 
about this. I dare say if I were at the place I could 
tell more. 

J. A. H. : I can get to know. 

A. W. : I can see a man very plainly ; tall ; like a 
man who would work at a quarry, by the clothes he 
wears. Prime of life — forty-eight or fifty. His name 
was Jim Hey. He must have died very suddenly. 
Something happened and he died very suddenly. I 
am inclined to think something happened to him. 
J. A. H. : Murder, do you think ? 
A. W. : No ; accident, I should say. Jim Hey. A 
strong, healthy man. Either a carter or a quarryman. 
[Pause.] 
Is there a place called Levensley ? This man was 
associated with Levensley. 

J. A. H. : Yes, I know such a place. 
A. W. : Was there a Joe Robinson ? 
J. A. H. : Not that I remember. 
A. W. : Is Levensley a farm ? 
J. A. H. : Both a farm and a house. 
A. W. : Levensley is connected with Jim Hey, I 
think. He probably had some accident. 

[I know no Jim Hey, but will inquire. My 
maternal grandfather's name w r as Hey, but I think 
he had no brother. Still, there are other local 
Heys, unrelated or very distantly related. Leven- 
sley is, like Yewton — but in quite a different 



ii2 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

locality — an outlying farm with a very good 
house. There are perhaps also a few cottages 
called Levensley in a general way. It is unlikely 
that the medium knew the name ; I have never 
mentioned it to him, and it is a long way from 
the main road, and not near any public road. 
It is about a mile from here. I doubt whether 
Wilkinson has ever been near it.] 

[April 23rd, 1916. — A friend tells me to-day 

that a Jim Hey, known as " Deaf Jim," a publican 

and horse-dealer, once lived at the Junction Inn, 

near Yewton, but that is all he knows. Later : See 

Sitting 9, June 5th, 1916.] 

There is somebody here called Bannister — William 

Bannister. Such a big man ; a long way back, before 

you were born. He knows about Jim Hey. 

[The Bannisters — my grandfather Hill's 

mother's people — lived at Kildwick, ten miles 

away. There was a William, I find, but I cannot 

ascertain much about him.] 

I see big draught horses. This William Bannister 

has been dead a long time. He would be oldish but 

not old, and he had either got lamed or walked lame 

because of some ailment, not because of age. He had 

to use a stick, couldn't walk very well. Rather strange, 

I have the impression that William Bannister had 

something to do with your grandfather on your father's 

side. He is a member of your grandfather's family on 

your father's side. 

[He might be an uncle of my grandfather Hill, 
whose mother's maiden name was Bannister. I 
will try to ascertain, but it will be difficult. We 
have lost sight of them, if any are left.] 
Had your mother a cousin named Ishmael ? 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 113 

J. A. H. : She had an uncle of that name. 
A. W. : I have a feeling that he was a cousin of 
your mother's ; long dead. There was some little 
variance between this man's family and hers. Some 
little disagreement. He was a cousin, I think. 

[Rather indefinite, but there was an Ishmael, 
not a first cousin, who was related to my mother. 
But it is all too vague to be evidential.] 
Was your grandmother named Mary ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. [Named and described before, if 
mother's mother.] 

A. W. : She must have lived to be very old, and 
had a lot of children. 

[About eighty-one, but only five children, I 
think.] 
Do you know if somebody has a long case clock 
belonging to her ? 
J. A. H. : Yes 

A. W. : A curious thing, this woman makes me feel 
I want to say, " I never had a headache in my life." 
[Medium laughs, repeating it. She certainly was a 
remarkably healthy woman, so far as we remember ; 
verj' active and wiry. I don't remember that she was 
ever ill until she died of old age.] 
J. A. H. : That sounds like her. 

[Note: April 21st, 1916. — I am told by rela- 
tives who knew her in earlier days that she had 
" sick headaches " up to the age of fifty.] 
A. W. : I see a letter dropping down on you. There 
is a letter coming to you from some man — probably 
London. It will not exactly disquiet you, but it will 
cause you to feel anxious. 

Have you a friend in London who is not well ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. [Thinking of a Mrs. Arnold.] 



ii4 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. : You might write. It would be a good thing 
to write to the friend. 

Somebody living in London, I think. I feel a 
woman's hand on my head — I feel the ring. It is 
someone on the other side. This man in the body — 
no doubt connected with her — is either ill or in trouble. 

I shall be very surprised if you don't hear from 
some man in London. He is either there now or 
going to be there. 

Have you had an idea or suggestion to lend somebody 
some money ? 

J. A. H. : No ; no idea of anything of the kind. 

A. W. : I don't think I should do it. It would not 
be effectual in what it was meant to do. It would not 
prove effective. 

There are a lot of phantom forms about. 

There is some woman called Elizabeth. She couldn't 
swallow very well. I think she has to do with that 
old lady who never had a headache in her life. Not so 
old as Mary. Black dress, black bonnet. Elizabeth. 
Belongs to the old lady. A long time ill. She couldn't 
swallow. Might have choked. Related to the old 
woman, I think. 

[No relative Elizabeth known to us. But see 
later.] 

I do feel baffled about that woman who had to do 
with a school. She ought to be able to tell where 
she was. 

J. A. H. : I will make inquiries. I know the head 
teachers of the Thornton schools for a long way back, 
but not the names of all the assistants. And I can't 
remember ever knowing a woman named Hanson. 
But we shall see. 

Clairvoyance ended. The medium seemed to have 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS u5 

been in particularly good form, physically and psychic- 
ally ; had said he was feeling much better in health. 
He went on so fast that I had difficulty in keeping up 
with him, but just managed it. There are pauses 
between the bursts, which enable me to overtake him 
if I get a few words behind. After five minutes of 
general talk, he left at 3.45 to walk to Causeway Foot, 
as it was fine. 

I know of no man friend in London who is likely 
to be ill or in trouble, and it is very unlikely that 
anyone will try to borrow money from me. Yet 
Wilkinson seemed very sure of the letter from the 
London friend who is ill or in trouble, and I took it 
that he is to be the would-be borrower. 

The foregoing was written out to-day, Thursday, 
April 20th, 1916. The medium's statements, and my 
remarks to him, are copied from verbatim notes taken 
at the time. 

Note: May 4th, 1916. — I hear to-day from Mrs. 
Napier's sister, who informs me as follows ; 

They (Mrs. N. and sister) always sat at the back 

of the church, both at Bromwell, where they lived for 

the last few years, and at Maesbury, where they lived 

previously. At the latter place there was no gallery. 

[Wilkinson's insistence on the gallery — feeling 

himself in it, etc. — may have been purposed, to 

show that the Bromwell church was meant.] 

The vicar at the Bromwell church has " a very 
prominent nose and long face." He visited Mrs. 
Napier during her last illness. 

Mrs. Napier's house was in Victoria Road, which 
is " not very " long. The ground floor is nearly on a 
level with the road, only two steps at the front door, 
after a path or drive. It is thus true that it is " not 



:i6 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

raised up like this one," for we have fifteen steps, in 
different places, and a slope-up garden path. I have 
never seen Mrs, Napier's Bromwell house, nor any 
photograph of it ; and I do not remember hearing any 
description of its elevation from the road. There was 
a pier-glass in the drawing-room and a heavy clock 
in the dining-room. But these are certainties in nearly 
any house. The pier-glass was in the dining-room at 
one time. 

On the wall of Mrs. Napier's bedroom there was a 
small photograph of herself. She was tall — 5 ft. 10| in. 
No engraving. The room seems to have been smaller 
than this one — i.e. than the room in which the sitting 
took place — for I am told it was " rather small," and 
had no bay-window. The room in which the sitting 
took place is over fifteen feet square, without reckoning 
a large bay-window. 

Nothing known about the brooch. 

The sister is a very cheerful young lady, usually ; 
a very suitable companion for Mrs. Napier, who was 
very fond of her. 

Nothing known about the worked garment. Mrs. 
Napier did very little fancy work. My sister once 
knitted and gave her a white wool waistcoat, with pink 
or blue ribbons — very pretty. Just possibly she was 
referring to this, and the medium misunderstood. 
But of course I do not lay stress on this. The inci- 
dent must be regarded as non- evidential. 

As to the Elizabeth connected with my grandmother 
Hey, a Purcell cousin of mine remembers quite well an 
Elizabeth Ogden who was some relative of our grand- 
mother Hey's — perhaps cousin — and with whom she 
was friendly. He feels almost sure that this Elizabeth 
had something the matter with her throat ; but we 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 117 

cannot ascertain. She lived a distance away, and we 
are not in touch with surviving members of the family. 

Note : May 3rd, 1916. — I have asked a local friend 
and former teacher whether she has ever known a 
woman named Hanson connected with a school, and 
she informs me that a Mr. and Mrs. Hanson were at 
one time caretakers of the school at which she (my 
informant) then taught, and at which a son of the 
Hansons also taught. She did not know them well, 
and never knew their Christian names. Mrs. Hanson 
became ill, and they left this locality some years 
ago. She has heard that Mrs. Hanson is now dead, 
but does not know where they went or where the 
surviving members of the family now are. 

Sunday, May 7th, 1916. — To-day I have seen 
another teacher who is still at that school. She says 
that Mrs. Hanson was of medium height, and had grey 
hair which stuck out at the sides ; was probably nice- 
looking when younger and in good health (see Sitting, 
Jan. 15, 1915, pp. 70, 73). Never saw her " dressed up," 
so cannot say about the black silk dress and ladylike 
appearance. Thinks she was fairly plump when they 
came here, but she became spare. Was middle-aged 
to elderly. Left this part about six years ago ; they 
were not local people, and were not here long. Knows 
no Christian names, but will try to ascertain or will 
try to learn where they went ; somewhere in York- 
shire, she thinks, not very far away. 

I never knew any of these Hansons, even by sight, 
and it is unlikely — though possible — that they knew 
me, though they probably knew of me ; particularly 
the teacher son, who would meet daily several people 
who know our family well. The school and the cot- 
tage where the Hansons lived are a few hundred yards 



n8 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

from here, but not on the main road. It is in fact a 
private road. 

Note: Sunday, May 21st, 1916.— To-day I hear 
that the names of Mr. and Mrs. Hanson were John 
and Martha ; so the " Hannah or Annie " seems 
wrong. But it is a curious thing that the man of whom 
inquiry was made said first : " Let me see ; I forget 
Mrs. Hanson's name. Some ordinary name — perhaps 
Hannah. No, I think not Hannah." Apparently he 
now finds it to have been Martha, but it is queer that, 
without any suggestion, he first thought it was Hannah, 
for he was told nothing whatever of my sittings, and 
did not know why his questioner wanted the name. 
It seems possible that Mrs. Hanson may have had two 
names, one of them Hannah ; but I doubt whether I 
can ascertain. 1 do not know where her body is 
buried, or where she died. So the name must be 
counted as wrong, though the surname and description 
are correct enough to suggest irresistibly a certain 
woman whom I had never heard of, and who, so far 
as my belief goes, was equally unknown to the medium. 
It is noteworthy that it was never said that she was 
a teacher, though I jumped to that conclusion, quite 
wrongly and unjustifiably. She was " connected with 
a school," " kept a school," " had to do with children," 
etc., all of which are true ; and these inevitably suggest 
a teacher ; yet though this must almost certainly have 
been the inference of Mr. Wilkinson's normal mind, he 
consistently avoided the mistake. This seems a slight 
but noteworthy indication of the probability of some 
genuinely external mind being in operation, and giving 
him the impressions. 

The prediction about the London letter and bor- 
rower has not been fulfilled, I am glad to say. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 119 

SITTING 9 

Monday, June 5th, 1916. Present, J. A. H. and medium 
(Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

Medium arrived 2.30 p.m., and after preliminary 
conversation about his recent tours, I handed him the 
same glove of Mrs, Napier's as before. 

A. W. : This person ought to be able to come by 
this time. 

J. A. H. : Yes, it looks so. 

A. W. : Some of these people seem able to come 
without effort, and others make great efforts and 
cannot manifest. 

There is an influence about you of a woman, middle- 
aged, rather tall and pale, dark. Not old. She has a 
dress that shines, like silk, I am impressed that her 
name was Ingham, or that somebody belonging to her 
was called Ingham. She is not lately dead ; she has 
been gone some time. Her name would be Ingham. 
Do you know somebody of that name who used to be 
a good singer ? 1 hear singing. It isn't this woman, 
but I am brought into an atmosphere of singing. There 
is somebody still living, connected with her, who is a 
good singer. You may come across them. 

J. A. H. : I don't remember anybody at the moment. 

A. W. : Some lady has come with her — an old lady 
called Walker. 

[Here I thought of the Mrs. Walkley, of sitting 

of February 17th, 1916, p. 91.] 

Quite an old person, with head bent forward, a lace 

thing about her shoulders and a white cap on her head. 

[Correct for Mrs. Walkley.] 

These two have come together, as if they knew 



i2o PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

each other. There is something mixed up between 
them. 

[Mrs. Ingham unrecognized, but I found two 

hours afterwards", on reading the report to my 

sister, that she formerly knew a Mrs, Ingham, who 

was more or less a friend of Mrs. Walkley's. The 

description seems to be not very good, for my 

sister remembers Mrs. Ingham as a fine-looking 

woman with good colour. But it is long since 

she died, and memory is uncertain.] 

There is a man here called James Hill, a big man, 

stout, standing by that chair, quite a solid form. Fair 

complexion, a bit sandy. I am impressed that his 

name is James Hill. It isn't that I am influenced by 

thinking of your name ; the impression is quite clear. 

This man seems to me a heavy man ; corpulent, not a 

good walker ; not infirm exactly, but would be rather 

heavy on his feet. Fresh colour in face. His clothes 

are coloured, not black. Trousers are a different colour 

from coat and vest. Grey jacket and vest, brown 

trousers. That man used to have a horse and trap ; 

not a big vehicle, horse not a heavy horse. That is a 

good way back, somebody elderly when you were young. 

He is brought here by somebody belonging to you. 

[A distant relative named James Hill died a 
few weeks ago. He lived and died some miles 
from here, and not in the medium's direction. I 
never knew him, but my brother and sister did ; 
they say he was tall and large-framed, but cer- 
tainly not stout. He was a little over eighty, 
but thus was hardly elderly when I was young, 
unless " young " means up to thirty or so. Nothing 
known about a horse and trap, though this may 
just possibly be correct. But on the whole the 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 121 

description does not fit. Perhaps it is an ancestor 

or collateral farther back.] 
That woman comes back — that woman called 
Ingham. She has once lived about you ; but not at 
the time of her death. She died away from here. She 
is beckoning me. I feel that she knew your mother. 
I am impressed to say that. 
[True.] 
[Wilkinson had been handling the glove off 

and on from the beginning, but nothing relevant 

to the owner had appeared, so I now said : " Better 

put that glove down ; we seem on another tack." 

He accordingly did so.] 
This woman in question, it is not a great way off 
where she has lived. It isn't just about here. I can 
see lots of people sitting together in a seat as if in a 
church. That makes me wonder if this woman had 
gone to the same church as your mother. That is my 
own assumption. 

[It is true of Mrs. Ingham ; she sat three pews 

behind us.] 
There is a young man here. He is tall — very tall, 
fairly fine build, not really thin. A young man. He 
died very suddenly. He might have had his head bad. 
Something happened to him very suddenly. He has 
a grey suit^on, and is very smart. A very tall young 
man. Do you know, I have an impression that this 
young man was not just balanced before he died ? 
Perhaps an illness brought it on. I feel as if some- 
thing of an untoward nature had overtaken him, and 
he had gone suddenly. I shouldn't wonder if this man 
did something that he shouldn't have done. I have 
a sensation of violence ; it is very unpleasant. I don't 
think I have seen that young man here before. 



i22 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

J. A. H. : I wish we could get his name. 
A. W. : I feel that his death was unusual — almost 
tragic. This is not something that has happened 
lately. He has been gone some time ; I can't tell 
how long, but it is not beyond your time of recollection. 
A few years back, maybe. 

J. A. H. : I think I know who it is. 

[A distant relative came to a tragic end about 
six years ago. He would be in the twenties. 
He dressed well but not excessively so. Height 
about 5 ft. 8 in., which is not " very tall." But 
Wilkinson is very short, and often seems to de- 
scribe spirits as taller than they really were. 
Comparing with himself, 5 ft. 8 in. is tall.] 
I am interested in this woman with a cap on. One 
is Mrs. Walker, and the other is Mrs. Ingham, I think. 
This Mrs. Walker would be a nice, mild-mannered 
woman ; refined, ladylike, by her appearance. She 
has not been dead very long. It seems kind of new 
to her. 

[True of Mrs. Walkley. She had an exception- 
ally gentle manner. Died February loth, 1916. 
See sitting of February 17th, 1916, p. 91.] 
There is a young woman named Sarah Ann Hey, 
or Sarah Hey. She would pass away many years ago, 
twenty-four or twenty-five years old. There is an old 
lady with her named Mary, as if they knew each other 
well. The young woman's dress is very old-fashioned 
— pleated in the skirt, frilled. She is taller than the 
old woman. The latter is very old but very active. 
The young one has been passed on farther back than 
you will remember, judging by the style of her 
dress. She is connected with the old woman, whoever 
she is. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 123 

[Unrecognized. But the active old woman is 

probably my grandmother, Mary Hey — named and 

described before — who was exceptionally active 

until about eighty. There have been several 

Sarah Heys in our family, and one Sarah Ann 

Hey not closely connected, who died about the 

age mentioned. But the description is not exact 

enough for certainty.] 

[Pause.] 

That young man set off on the train to some place. 

I feel as if I were about a train. This is the young 

man that something happened to. Whether he went 

away I don't know ; but something happened to him, 

away from his home. You won't let this worry you ? 

I don't want to say anything that would worry 

you. 

J. A. H. : No ; it will not worry me at all. I think 
I know who it is. 

[My distant relative mentioned was killed on 
the railway, a few miles from his home.] 
A. W. : This young woman has been gone so long 
that you may need to make inquiries to find out who 
she is. But she is connected up with your family. 

Did you know anything about that man with the 
horse and trap ? 

J. A. H. : I don't remember just now, but it may 
be all right. 

A. W. : I am impressed that that young man will 
come again. As if somebody had brought him. I 
can't get any more about him. 

That man with the horse and cart must have belonged 
to your mother. He was connected with your mother. 
He had been a farmer, I think ; his appearance looks 
like that. 



i2 4 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[Certainly wrong, I think, and a curious example 

of confusion, for Wilkinson had given the name as 

James Hill, which obviously places him on my 

father's side. My mother had no Hill relatives 

that I know of, except through my father.] 

That young woman — I think you have got a picture 

of her, with a " bustle " on. It looks like a miniature. 

She is of your family, and she comes with the old 

woman called Mary. It is your mother's side of the 

family that she belongs to. 

[True, if it does turn out to be anybody. Will 
look up old photographs. But the " bustle " days 
are within my recollection, and I think no Sarah 
Hey that we know of has died so recently ; more- 
over, in the earlier part of the sitting Wilkinson 
thought the dress indicated a period before my 
time.] 
Have you had somebody here just lately, very 
lively ? I feel somebody's presence, and as if they had 
been talking a lot and laughing. I feel very lively ; 
not frivolous, but full of talk and fun. It was a man. 
J. A. H. : I don't remember anybody of the sort 
lately. My brother called on Saturday, but there was 
no special liveliness : all cheerful, but no laughing that 
I remember. 

A. W. : Does he often call ? 
J. A. H. : Yes, pretty often. 

A. W. : It is somebody who is not a frequent caller. 
Perhaps somebody who is coming. 
Has your brother two names ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : Has he lost somebody lately ? 
J. A. H. : Not by death, but a daughter of his has 
got married lately. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 125 

A. W. : Oh ! is that all ? Well, she isn't lost. But 
I see over your head a big 3. This 3 is in a kind of 
discoloured light. It is shaped like an egg, and there 
is speckled greyish matter round. Something to do 
with you, and the colour does not lend any enchant- 
ment. It is not an omen of danger, but more of a 
warning. Perhaps in three days or three weeks you 
ought to be specially careful about something. 

You don't know if there was somebody born in 1861 ? 

J. A. H. : No ; nobody that I know of. My brother 
was born in 1858 ; that's the nearest I can think of. 

A. W. : I see May, 1861. Something happened then 
— something rather important in your family. That 
was before you were born ? 

J. A. H. : Yes ; a fair while before. 

A. W. : Oh ! I've something to tell you. You re- 
member when I was here before, I got the name of a 
farm — I forget what it was. Well, when I was walking 
home from here I saw a bill stuck up [on the end of a 
public-house up the road, I think he said, but I missed 
getting that down] advertising the sale of cattle, etc., 
at a farm of that same name. I had never heard of 
it before. 

J. A. H. : Was it Levensley ? 

A. W. : I don't remember. But I know the name 
on the bill was the name I had got here, and I thought 
it was perhaps just a prediction of something I was 
going to see. 

[At the sitting of April 19th he got a Jim Hey 
and a Joe Robinson associated with Levensley ; 
both names unknown to me. But when he men- 
tioned the poster I remembered that a Levensley 
farm, with stock, was recently sold, the owner, 
Thomas Robinson, having died. So the Joe 



i26 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Robinson may have meaning. There are two 

farms at Levensley, and I was thinking of the 

other one, which I know best ; hence my failure 

to see the appropriateness of the name Robinson. 

Later, October 31st, 1916. — I find that Thomas 

Robinson's father was named Joseph, and was 

known as Joe ; and he lived at that same farm, 

dying many years ago. So the medium was right. 

Probably both knew me by sight, but I did not 

know them. See p. 111.] 

A. W. : Have you known somebody called Purcell ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : A young man of that name died. I am 
impressed that there was some young man. I am 
taken somewhere outside, to somebody who would 
know him. Near by. Purcell — that is the name. Is 
there somebody called Jabez Purcell ? 
J. A. H. : There was. 
A. W. : Has he passed away ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

[This house was owned and occupied, some 
years ago— not immediately before our tenancy — 
by a Mr. Purcell. His father, who died about 
thirty years ago (in 1881, I find), was Jabez 
Purcell. The young man is probably Harry Purcell 
— grandson of Jabez — who died a few years 
ago, aged about twenty-eight. I hardly knew him ; 
he lived in another town a few miles away. But the 
medium's impression that there was someone near 
who would know him is correct, for an uncle and 
two cousins of Harry Purcell's live within half a 
mile from here. I know them all fairly intimately. 
Harry Purcell used to visit this house occasionally, 
when his uncle lived here.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 127 

You don't know if there has been somebody called 
Lewis who lived in this house ? 

J. A. H. : No ; but I once knew somebody of that 
name. 

A. W. : There is somebody called Lewis, living some- 
where away from here, and you will hear something that 
will interest you. It is somebody in the body. 

[Mrs. Lewis, no doubt. There was a good 
deal about them in my sitting of January 19th, 
1916, pp. 82-84.] 
I can see that 3 again. It isn't so murky as it 
was. 

Have you a family record of births ? 
J. A. H. : Yes, but it doesn't go very far back. 
A. W. : Somebody was born May 7th or 17th, 1861. 
It is mixed up, but I can't help it. 

Did any of your mother's people live at Denholme ? 
J. A. H. : I don't think so. 

A. W. : I have a vision of a man, and I feel to be 

taken up that road, to Denholme. I come at a place 

almost by itself. It looks like a bit of a farm, but 

not much of one. I feel to get there, and I can't get 

any farther. It seems towards Denholme. It seems 

of your mother's family, though I don't see your mother. 

[My mother's father, and she herself before 

marriage, lived for a time on a small and rather 

lonely farm, up the road indicated. It is not in 

Denholme, but it is in that direction, and is pretty 

near Denholme's boundary.] 

Clairvoyance ended. Wilkinson had a cold and 

was not in very good form. Things seemed more vague 

and mixed up than usual. He left at 3.30 p.m. 

Note : June 27th, 1916. — Three weeks have now 
passed since the sitting, and nothing has happened 



n8 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

that can with certainty be fitted in with the 3 which 
seemed to be a warning to be careful about something 
in three days or three weeks. One thing, however, is 
worth noting. It happened that on the 7th inst. — the 
third day if we count the day of the sitting as one — 
there called a man who had not called for some years, 
and who was somewhat insistent on seeing me. He 
is well-intentioned, but rather vehement and dogmatic. 
On the occasion of a previous visit, when the worthy 
gentleman had offered doctrinal consolations of an 
unfortunately unacceptable character, I foolishly al- 
lowed myself to argue some points ; and argument is 
not good for anyone with a wrenched heart, as I soon 
found out. So I thought it better not to see him when 
he called on the 7th. Perhaps the 3 was a warning 
of his approaching call, and a suggestion that I had 
better not see him. He said he had been contemplating 
the call for some days, and it may be that some friend 
of mine on the other side became aware of the fact and 
showed Wilkinson the murky 3, impressing him that I 
was to be careful on the third day. 



SITTING 10 

Wednesday, August 2nd, 1916. Present, J. A. H., the 
medium, and — for part of the time — my sister M. H., 
and Mr. Percy Lund. 

On the morning of August 2nd I received a postcard 
from my friend, Mr. Lund, saying that he would be 
coming up in the afternoon. He had never met Mr. 
Wilkinson, nor had I ever mentioned him to the latter, 
so, as I had a sitting booked for this date (August 2nd), 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 129 

I telephoned P. L. to be here at 2.30 p.m., in order to 
take part. I have no reason to believe that Wilkinson 
knew or had ever heard of him. 

The medium arrived at 2.10 p.m. My sister brought 
him in, and the three of us talked about W.'s walk 
over, for there are various ways, and he had got lost. 
At 2.20 my sister (M. H.) went out, saying to me : 
" Shall I show Mr, Lund in when he comes ? " This 
gave away the name, as she realized a second too late. 
However, it did not matter much, as the sitting yielded 
little that was evidential in regard to him. I proceeded 
to explain to the medium that I expected a friend of 
mine who was interested in the subject, etc., but at 
2.35 I said I thought he must have been prevented, 
and Wilkinson settled himself to try to get clairvoyance 
for me in the usual way. After a few minutes he began 
to get impressions. 

A. W. : I see behind you a reservoir and a farm. I 
see an old man and woman from this farm, and I see 
a picture of a reservoir. The man is tall, fairly big, 
and leans a bit. He looks like a farmer. His name 
is Thomas. I have a strong impression that the woman's 
name is Betty. I can't tell where this water is, but 
it is still, not running. It is a reservoir. It was a 
very clear picture. My impression was of a Thomas 
and Betty, as if it were a man and his wife, both old 
people. 

[My father had an uncle named Thomas Lee, 
and his wife was Betty Lee, They were farmers, 
and lived about a mile from here. Thomas was 
over eighty when he died, about fourteen years 
ago. I knew him only slightly. His wife pre- 
deceased him. There is no reservoir within a 
mile or so of the farm, and the water of the one 
J 



130 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

at that distance is not visible from the farm (being 

higher up), though its embankment may be. I 

do not think Thomas was tall ; he was about 

average. But Wilkinson nearly always describes 

spirit people as taller than they actually were. 

He himself is very short.] 

If that man [Lund] doesn't come, I should like your 

sister to come in. Ask your sister to come in, if she 

is staying in the house. 

[I rang, and my sister came.] 
J. A. H. to M. H. : Lund doesn't seem to be coming, 
so will you come in ? [M. H. came in.] 

A. "W . : There is some old woman, a very old woman, 
over eighty. Yes, evidently you were wanted [to 
M. H.]. She would be eighty-four or eighty-five. 
Rather an old-fashioned dress on, kind of pleated or 
puffed. Name, Amelia. That would be her name. 
People might call her Millie. A very old woman ; 
seems to have gone down with age. I don't think 
she has been deceased long ; she hasn't got clear away 
from here. I think there was somebody connected 
with this woman — a youngish man ; thirty-three or 
thirty-four. He stands up by her. He has been gone 
longer than her. They seem to know each other. He 
predeceased her. I am strongly impressed with the 
name Amelia. It isn't a very common name. 
M. H. : No. 

A. W. : That lady's husband was John. He pre- 
deceased her. He would be much younger at death 
than she was when she died. Been gone some time. 
John and Amelia. You don't often hear that name 
now. 

[I recognized none of this, but after the de- 
parture of the 'medium, my sister reminded me 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 131 

of John Holden and his wife Amelia, whom the 
description certainly fits. They lived in our 
neighbourhood. John Holden was my maternal 
grandfather's cousin, but I think few people knew 
of the relationship. He died a long time ago — 
perhaps thirty years. His wife, whom my grand- 
mother called Millie, died about ten years ago 
(1910, I find), aged over eighty — probably eighty- 
four or eighty-five. I dimly remember or seem 
to remember that a son of theirs died when young- 
ish, say thirty or so, but my sister remembers 
nothing of this. She knew the old lady Amelia 
well, much better than I did. Hence perhaps 
Wilkinson's strong impression that M, H. was 
wanted in the room, Mrs. Holden being thus 
helped to manifest. 

[Later, September 16th, 1916 : I find after much 
inquiry that the son died in 1889, aged thirty- one, 
and his father in 1888, aged sixty-five.] 
A. W. to J. A. H. : There seem to be a lot of 

farmers about you. Somebody died at a farm. But 

you are not farmers ? 

J. A. H. : No ; but some of our folk may have been, 

a long way back. [At this point Lund arrived. M. H. 

brought him in, and I introduced him without name 

as a friend interested in these things.] 

A. W. : There's somebody connected with Betty, 

called Clapham or Clapton. I don't know, but I 

think Betty might be a Wesleyan. It would make one 

think they still have clingings to the church they 

went to. 

[No Clapton or Clapham known, but will in- 
quire about Betty's maiden name, etc. She was 
a Wesleyan.] 



i32 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. to P. L. : You might sit over there ; the sun 
s on you. 

[P. L. moved to couch.] 

This Thomas and Betty kept a farm, and not very 
far away was a sheet of water. That is vividly impressed 
on me. 

There is some man here who might have been a 
schoolmaster ; there is something over his shoulders 
like a gown. A scholar. Middle-aged ; about sixty, 
rather tall. Did you ever know somebody called 
Waldron— W-A-L-D-R-O-N ? [to M. H.]. 

M. H. : Yes. 

A. W. : Thomas Waldron. I think it is Waldron. 
Probably this man had been a professor or school- 
master. He has a lot of books with him. He is " well 
up." A classical man, good at Latin. I see books, 
which I should call Latin. He is just by that bookcase 
[south-east corner of room]. He has been deceased 
about twelve years, I should think ; probably more. 

[Pause.] 

J. A. H. : All that is very good. 

A. W. : This man was very fond of boys — teaching 
boys. He was a bit Churchy ; I should not think he 
was a Dissenter — more Churchy. The letters on those 
big books are red and black. I can see they are Latin. 
He has^ajrig book with HOMER on it. Would 
that be the name of the writer, perhaps ? 

P. L. : Very likely. 

A.^W. : Big leather binding. Homer is the name 
of the writer. The man would be about sixty when 
he died, and he was not ill long. Very fond of books ; 
a very interesting man. 

This man has been gone longer than I said. He 
is telling me something. How long did I say ? 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 133 

M. H. : Twelve years. 

A. W. : It is longer than that. 

[Thomas Waldron was headmaster of Thornton 
Grammar School from about 1875 to 1898, in which 
latter year he died very suddenly — cerebral haemor- 
rhage — without having been in bed ill at all. I 
was at the school from 1878 to 1886. Pope's 
translation of Homer was in the school library, 
and I remember fairly revelling in the Iliad. I 
do not remember that Mr. Waldron knew any- 
thing about that, for the boys took home what 
books they liked ; but no doubt he would look 
at the librarian's book sometimes, to see what we 
mostly read. Or he may have questioned us. I 
don't remember. Mr. Waldron was a classical 
man, specially good at Latin. He wore a gown in 
school. He was a Churchman, and took Orders 
about two years before his death, probably with 
the idea of a curacy. His age at death was 
between fifty-nine and sixty. He was not tall, 
however ; here Wilkinson makes his usual mistake.] 
A. W. to P. L. : I am taken to Pudsey with you 
by tram. I never was in Pudsey myself. There is 
a man, rather stout, fresh complexion, not very old. 
He has a very enthusiastic manner ; a bit fussy. Seems 
as if he has impressed me to go to Pudsey. You had 
better make yourself better acquainted with some- 
body at Pudsey. I think this man is living, in the 
body, but I cannot be certain. I shall be very much 
surprised if you do not have some association with 
Pudsey, if you have not had some already. There is 
something that links you up with Pudsey — something 
to do with a chapel there — a big chapel. 

You have brought someone with you, a young 



■34 PSYGHIGAL INVESTIGATIONS 

man who died very suddenly. Rather tall, moderately 
well built, age twenty-six or twenty-seven, rather fair 
moustache, not very heavy, well-dressed. Died very 
suddenly. Makes me feel that his death was the result 
of some untoward happening, not a natural decease. 
He is a very real presence to me — appears quite objec- 
tive. As if he had come with you [P. L.]. 

[Mr. Lund has no special associations with 
Pudsey. But the young man seems to be pro- 
bably the young man who was described at my 
Sitting of June 5th, pp. 121-123, and who, Wilkinson 
then felt, would come again. He was a very distant 
relative of mine, who did not live about here, and 
he died suddenly and tragically. It happens that 
though he was related to me and not to Mr. Lund, 
the latter had known him personally, and I had 
not. This, perhaps, explains Wilkinson's remark 
that the spirit seemed to be with P. L.] 
A. W. [still to P. L.] : There is a very funny smell 
where you have been. Something very fusty ; I don't 
know what to liken it to — perhaps a bit like tallow. 
Like a shut-up room. Have you had those clothes on 
all day ? 

P. L. : Yes, to-day and yesterday. 
A. W. : I don't think it has anything to do with 
that young man. Did you know him ? Fairly long 
features, good nose, straight. 

P. L. : I'm not sure. It might do for two or three. 
A. W. [to M. H.] : That old lady doesn't leave you. 
Do you know her ? 

M. H. : I have an idea. 

A. W. : You might find out that this lady lost a 
young man. [To P. L.] I am interested in the smell 
I get from you* 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 135 

J. A. H. to P. L. : Isn't that correct ? 
P. L. : I can't think of anything. Tobacco ? 
A. W. : No ; it seems continual, in the atmosphere, 
impregnated with it. Have you ever known a man 
at Pudsey named Joseph ? 

P. L. : My associations with Pudsey were long ago, 
and very slight. 

A. W. : This might be remote. Man named Joseph, 
went to a big chapel. He was a prominent man at the 
chapel. I think it will be worth your while to put it 
down. 

[To M. H.]: You remember me speaking about 
Thomas Waldron ? There is some woman connected 
with this man ; she is in the body, about seventy years 
of age. You may hear of her soon. Some circum- 
stances linked up with this man. 

[Mr. Waldron' s widow is living, about forty 
miles away. She left this district about 1901, and 
neither he nor she had or have any relatives about 
here. The age is about right. She is a little over 
seventy. 

The smell associated with P. L. I thought 
was perhaps printers' ink, indicating the nature of 
his business, in which, however, he does not now 
take a very active part. Wilkinson sometimes 
gets the former earth- occupations of spirits by a 
psychical smell-perception, as when he smelt 
brewing after describing Edmund Driver, the hotel- 
keeper, in my sitting of February 17th, 1916.] 
A. W. to P. L. : There is a very strong orthodoxy about 
you. You are a bit narrow in your views, religiously, 
[Laughter on part of sitters, for P. L. is not 
narrow theologically. But there is a sort of truth 
in it, for he dislikes psychical research.] 



i3^ PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

It is a kind of atmosphere. I feel limited. You 
can't go beyond it. It may be due to your associations. 
J. A. H. to A. W. : All this is a bit rough on him. 
A. W. : It is due sometimes to those who come 
about people. It may be somebody on the other side. 
[To P. L.] : I shall be surprised if you don't discover 
something about a man who lived and died at Pudsey 
a long time since. [To J. A. H.] : You remember me 
seeing an old man here a time or two — a man with a 
funny name ? 

J. A. H. : Yes ; Leather, perhaps. 

A. W. : That's it. He is here. He has a lady 

with him ; very young, beside him. Quite youthful. 

I know the man's face well ; I have seen him before. 

[To M. H.] : The lady is about your age. They are 

together. Her name was Sarah. She might be some 

relation to the man. However, her name was Sarah. 

[Mr. Leather's wife's name was Sarah. She 

died December 14th, 1866, aged thirty-eight. This 

is the first time she has been mentioned at my 

sittings. The Leather tombstone is in an almost 

inaccessible part of a private cemetery, away 

from the path, and the lettering is unreadable 

except at close range. I once asked Wilkinson 

whether he had ever been in that cemetery (after 

he had got Mr. Leather's full name), and he said he 

had never been in any local cemetery. See p. 17.] 

A. W. to P. L. : Have you some lady belonging to 

you who is not well, troubled with her heart ? She 

has a weak heart : liable to heart failure. I feel a 

faint come over me. It seems a continual thing ; 

keeps happening. She should not go away from home ; 

not to the seaside— I feel like that ; just take it for 

what it is worth. [Not specially applicable.] To go 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 137 

away from home would be unwise just now. I don't 
mean just going out of doors ; I mean going away. 
She is better at home. 

[P. L.'s wife has occasional trouble with a weak 
heart if she does too much, but she lives a normal 
life, goes away a good deal, is active in philan- 
thropic work, and has been quite up to par lately.] 
A. W. to M. H. : Have you had some friend once 
named Downs ? 

M. H. : No ; but it is a fairly common name. 

[We know several people of that name, alive 
and dead.] 
A. W. : That young man who died suddenly — it 
would be a shock to his people. Quite a consternation 
brought about by his death. 

P. L. : Can you get his name ? 
A. W. : I'm trying. Perhaps the exciting circum- 
stances of his passing, and this being the first time he 
has come, it may be difficult for him to get his name 
through. 

J. A. H. : I think he has been before. 
A. W« : I don't remember that he has. 

[Medium looked at me in a very puzzled way, 
evidently thinking that the spirit belonged to Mr. 
Lund, and therefore would not have been before. 
The explanation probably is, as already said, that, 
though the young man was a distant relative of 
my own, I had never known him, while P. L. had.] 
That man that's a schoolmaster is looking at all 
the books. He has not been here before. 

[True, and I am quite sure I have never men- 
tioned him to the medium.] 
J. A. H. : Glad to hear of him ; we hope he will 
come again. 



138 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

A. W. : You will hear something as a sequel to 
this man coming. A very scholarly man. Bit churchy. 
They make you feel creepy, these Churchmen ! 

J. A, H. : But Mr. Waldron was an excellent sort. 

[Wilkinson once was reprimanded for his 

spiritualism by a vigorously dogmatic and rather 

ill-mannered vicar; and, being no match for his 

assailant in argument, he not unnaturally rather 

dreads a clergyman.] 

A. W. to P. L. : Have you ever sat at a table to 

get movements ? 

P. L. : Yes ; a long time since. 
A. W. : How long since ? 
P. L. : About fifteen years. 

A. W. : Lot of people about you, but it's all moidered 
up. All chapel folks, very orthodox atmosphere, very 
conservative in their views. 

[P. L. considers this untrue as to his immediate 
ancestors and relatives generally.] 
I wish I could come in contact mentally with that 
young man, but all is chaos about my head. Can't 
get anything clear. This won't worry you ? 
P. L. : No, not at all. 

[The young man had been ill for some months 
before his death.] 
A. W. : It would be good if that schoolmaster could 
get something through. 

J. A. H. : I wish he could spell something out in 
Latin. 

[Medium wrote automatically a word or two, 
but it turned out to be only " Waldron, Thomas."] 
M. H. : He hasn't said who brought him ? 
A. W. : No. 
J. A. H. : That would be interesting. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 139 

[He and Mr. Leather were intimate friends ; 
probably the latter brought him, as he has brought 
others.] 
A. W. : He would have been a very old man if he 
had been living now. 

[Not very ; he would have been seventy-eight, 
but used to look older than his years.] 
I can go back to that farm that I saw at first. 
There's somebody living, belonging to that old couple. 
You might discover somebody called Clapham. She 
would be a Wesleyan. That is vividly impressed on me. 
[To P. L.] : I can't understand about that funny 
smell with you. Just as if it was brought in wafts. 
You have been quite well lately ? 
P. L. : Yes, except for hay fever. 
A. W. : You have been in some place which is not 
altogether congenial to you. That is the idea, what- 
ever it is. [To M. H.] : There is a lady beside you, 
shorter than you, hair smooth, no colour, delicate- 
looking. I should call her about sixty. Black dress, 
lace about neck ; brooch. Plain dress ; good. Thin, 
pale fingers. She must have been delicate, something 
with the chest. Ailing a while. She knows you [i.e. 
M. H.]. Name, Mary. Looks into your face as if she 
knew you. Been deceased many years. Not so tall 
as you. The woman I saw before — Millie — must have 
known her ; they seem to recognize each other. 

[My mother ; cancer of breast ; died 1886. 
Not evidential, because given before. The state- 
ment that she knew Millie, however, is new and 
true. Millie has not appeared or been mentioned 
at any previous sitting.] 
A. W. [to nobody in particular] : I wish I could get 
that young man to say his name. The circumstances 



Mo PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

of his passing make it difficult for him to reach me 
mentally. These are quick flashes. 

[To M. H.] : That lady that I have just seen with 
you, there's an old man with her, eighty years old, 
biggish, quite grey, fairly good features, white shirt. 
He builds up by her. He is some close relation to 
her — resemblance in features. 

[Mother's father, described often before. Died 
1889. White shirt very characteristic] 

A. W. to P. L. : If you sat at a table you might 
get some automatism. I feel a helpful emanation. It 
doesn't matter about not believing, if only one is not 
prejudiced. Whatever it is where you have been, it 
is not very healthy for you. You have been puz- 
zling something out, and you are tired and closed 
up. 

P. L. : Yes, I have been puzzling something out, 
that's true. 

A. W. : The smell is dying away. 

[P. L. isn't much in the printing works. The 
smell was entirely psychic, I think. He never 
brings me any smell of ink or anything else.] 

J. A. H. : I wish that schoolmaster would spell 
some Latin out. 

A. W. : Perhaps he will next time. Funny name 
he had — never heard it before. W-A-L-D-R-O-N. 

J. A. H. : Right. 

A. W. : Did he belong to the Church of England ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

A. W. to P. L. : I feel as if I could preach or 
lecture to you. You have somebody, or will have 
somebody, who is enthusiastic in their beliefs. Must 
have served them well in life, as they stick to them. 
[ Chuckles.] Have you had some relation who was a 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 141 

" local preacher " ? I feel as if I could lecture you, 
about what you believe. 
P. L. : No. 

[The impression I got was that some deceased 
relative of P. L.'s felt like castigating him for his 
heresies. But the evidentiality of what was said 
to him was almost nil, the lady's weak heart, etc., 
being almost the only correct thing, unless some- 
thing comes of the Pudsey Joseph. Mr. Lund's 
father was thus named, but he had no Pudsey 
associations so far as P. L. knows.] 
Wilkinson left at 4.30. I had taken verbatim 
shorthand notes, which are copied word for word in 
the foregoing account. Written out Thursday and 
Friday, August 3rd and 4th, 1916. 

Later, January 24th, 1917 : I have now ascertained, 
from one of the very few people living who could tell 
it, that my great-aunt Betty Lee, before her marriage 
— i.e. about sixty years ago — lived at a house over- 
looking a reservoir, some miles from here. Also that 
her most intimate friends were named Clapham. The 
medium's statements thus turn out correct, and are 
in this instance particularly impressive. Whatever 
the explanation, it is not normally- acquired knowledge 
or telepathy from me. I have now so often found 
Wilkinson's statements true, after much painstaking 
inquiry, that I am inclined to believe that the few things 
which I have not been able to verify about remote 
ancestors, etc., are probably true also. 



M2 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

SITTING 11 

Monday, September 11th, 1916. Present, J. A. H. and 
medium (Mr. Tom Tyrrell). 

This sitting was arranged by post some weeks ago, 
when I wrote saying that I had heard remarkable things 
about Mr. Tyrrell's clairvoyance, and that I should 
like to see him if he ever came into this neighbour- 
hood. He replied that he was addressing a Spiritualist 
Society at Halifax on September 10th, and would come 
on the afternoon of the 11th. I told him nothing 
about myself except that I was invalided with an old 
heart strain. 

Accordingly, he arrived by the 2.17 train, and my 
sister met him on the road. He came into my room 
at once, and we chatted. He said he had never heard 
of me until I wrote to him, and knew nothing about 
me ; had never been in Thornton before, and in Brad- 
ford only once. Told about his wife, her milliner's 
shop, and how he went to the mill (weaver) until nine 
years ago, but has been a spiritualist platform speaker 
and clairvoyant for over thirty years. His platform 
clairvoyance is normal, though assisted by a spirit 
named Billy Matthews — " Owd Billy " — whom he some- 
times hears giving him names. This Billy has been his 
principal guide for a long time, and was at first unknown 
to him ; but eventually he came across a woman, not 
a spiritualist, who turned out to be Billy Matthews's 
daughter, and the identification was established by 
many details. So says Tyrrell ; but this, of course, 
isn't evidence. 

In the course of half an hour, Tyrrell became quiet, 
breathed rather heavily for two minutes, and " Billy " 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 143 

appeared. Medium's eyes almost closed, and eyeballs 
apparently rolled up as usual in trance. 

Billy : Good afternoon, lad. [Leans forward and 
shakes hands.] We are sorry to see you're poorly, but 
perhaps you don't like too much sympathy. Now I'm 
only an uneducated man — I'm Owd Billy — and I can 
only talk Lancashire dialect, an' tha mayn't under- 
stand it. 

J. A. H. : Oh, yes, I shall. 

B. [after a minute's silence] : There's a very old 
man across yonder [indicating a point near the window, 
three or four yards away] ; he would be eighty-five or 
eighty-six. He seems a very eccentric man. I don't 
see any relationship between you. Grey moustache 
and beard. Black clothes. He would talk very loud, 
would want to be heard. He is showing us a board — 
a chess-board. He would be fond of chess. Seems 
as if he knew tha, lad. Name of James Brearley. He 
lived in No. 7 Ford Street — somewhere about here, we 
expect. Talking very loud ; likes to be heard. 
[Pause.] 

J. A. H. : I believe that's very good. 
B. : He's surprised to find that he can come back. 
Very fond of playing at chess. Showing chess-board. 
Also something about golf or bowling. 

We can't hold them long, only twelve or sixteen 
seconds. Well, he seems to know tha, lad. 

[The description recalled nothing until the 
name was given. James Brearley was a superior 
sort of working-man, employed in a local mill. He 
was an original character, quite out of the ordinary 
run, and " eccentric " is applicable. He used to 
live at Hillhead, a remote outlying part of the 
village, and we lived not far away, from 1878 to 



144 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

1897. I saw him often when I was a boy, playing 
about when he was going to or from the mill. I 
don't remember ever speaking to him, but he would 
know me well enough as the son of my father, 
whom he would know and who knew him and his 
family. Also his son was a schoolfellow of mine, 
and we chummed a little at one time. After 1897 
I doubt whether I ever saw old James, but I occa- 
sionally heard of him as going nearly every even- 
ing, with another veteran of over eighty, to a local 
Liberal Club. These two were apparently a regular 
evening feature of the club until Brearley's last 
illness. He died two and a half years ago, aged 
eighty-three or eighty-four. I think he moved 
from Hillhead ; I have no knowledge of his later 
address, but will inquire. There is a local Ford 
Street, and it is likely enough that he lived there, 
for I know that his friend lives in that street and 
has lived there twenty years or more. 

I rather think there may be an explanation of 
his appearance, for though I should not have 
expected him on his own account, it happens that 
a club frequenter named Townley, whom I knew 
well and greatly liked when we were youths and 
who is often in my thoughts, died a few months 
ago, and may have brought the old man. Townley 
was a good chess-player, also an excellent amateur 
photographer ; and he once photographed the two 
ancients over a chess-table at the club, though I 
doubt whether Brearley was much of a player. 

As to the description, it strikes me as correct 
except that I am uncertain about a beard. I 
rather think he had only a grey moustache when 
I knew him, but I am not sure. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 145 

Later, September 14th, 1916 : I have inter- 
viewed a man who knew Br earl ey well, and he 
says that the beard is correct and the description 
strikingly true, particularly the loud talking and 
liking to be heard. I did not know this.] 
B. : There's a man here, very bright. I can hardly 
look at him. About fifty ; been passed away some 
time. Dressed beautifully. Black coat. If every- 
thing was not straight he would be very much put 
out. Very intellectual. He is watching you writing 
it all down, and is very interested. Doctor Richard 
Hodgson ; passed away in America. We hardly ex- 
pect you to know him, as he passed away in America. 
He is showing us three books. I can see one of 'em 
plain : " Religion and Modern Psychology," " New 
Evidences in Psychical " [sic], and the other " Survival 
Evidence," or something like that. He is holding 
these out to tha. He is opening one of 'em. [I think 
it was said to be the first-named, but did not get that 

down.] Why, it has thy name in ! He seems Has 

ta been writin' a book, lad ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

B. : He seems to be congratulating tha. 
J. A, H. : Thanks. 

B. : He says : " I've brought my old friend, Henry 
Sidgwick, with me." I can't see him. But tha knows, 
lad, tha'rt surrahnded with a beautiful halo of light. 
Tha'rt very intellectual. Tha'rt a good judge of 
character ; it doesn't tak' tha long to reckon folk 
up. 

There's a beautiful lady here ; been passed away 
a long, long time. If ever a lady lived good, this lady 
did. She has spirit robes on, and she throws her 
mantle over you as if to protect you. Name, Elizabeth 

K 



14^ PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Hill. She's brought John with her. We don't know 
who it is. We can only say what we see. 

[An Elizabeth Hill did exist — but not a direct 
ancestor, I think — about a century ago. But the 
name is common. John, perhaps grandfather.] 
Are ta fond of parsons, lad ? 
J. A. H. : Not particularly. 

B. : Well, there's a parson here ; seems interested. 
He wants you to take it all down. About seventy-six ; 
well-built man, grey moustache and beard. A good 
man. Name, Reverend George Edmondson. He holds 
up a book ; Manchester Road Baptists ; probably in 
Bradford. The book has it on. He lived in some 
Marshfield Street ; been passed away a bit ; can't 
tell how long. It's a funny thing — he is more anxious 
about a lad he is bringing than about himself. There's 
been a bit of sorrow about this lad ; he is a cripple — 
poor twisted body ! He would be a shoeblack, and 
would sell newspapers. His name is Micky Scanlon, 
or something like that. A bright, intelligent lad. 
Lived in Sun Street. Parson seems to be helping this 
lad. Does ta knaw who it is ? 

J. A. H. : I don't remember that I do. 
B. : This lad was very well respected* The parson 
says Father O'Shaughnessy would know him. Nice, 
intelligent lad. 

[This about Mr. Edmondson, Micky, and Father 
O'S. is meaningless to me. There is a Manchester 
Road in Bradford, but I know of no Baptist chapel 
there, though there may be one. I will inquire.] 
There's a dog comes here. Are ta fond of dogs ? 
J. A. H. : Not very specially. 
B. : It's a beautiful collie. 
J. A. H. : What is its name ? [Thinking of a fine 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 147 

collie named Nip, which used to live next door, dying 
a few months ago.] 

B. : Name, Victor. Is there somebody called Dudley 
belonging to you ? 

J. A. H. : Not that I know of. 
B. : The lower brute creation passes into spirit life, 
same as us. There's a woman comes, and the dog 
appears again. A beautiful woman, about sixty-seven, 
very ladylike ; a very religious lady, I believe. She 
is showing me a photograph, not exactly a photograph, 
but a small picture. It has this dog on it, sitting on 
its haunches. On the bottom of the picture there are 
the words, " Save us." Underneath there is " Frances 
Power Cobbe." A woman very fond of dogs. She 
comes with the picture and shows the dog. 

[Perhaps this is out of the medium's own 
memory, for it must be assumed that he knows, 
as most people know, about Miss Cobbe' s anti- 
vivisection activities. It is, however, noteworthy 
that I have had Miss Cobbe in mind a good deal 
lately, for I have been trying to get hold of her 
collection of " Peak in Darien " cases, mentioned 
by Myers in "Human Personality." I wrote to the 
L.S.A. Library and to several book dealers, but it 
seems unobtainable.] 
Is there something that's puzzling tha at present ? 
J. A. H. : No ; nothing special that I know of. 
B. : There's a lady comes, not a relation, we think. 
Very frail, about sixty-one or sixty-two. Surrounded 
with foreign influences. Had something to do with 
spiritualism. She is showing us The Two Worlds. 
Alice Nicholson. Lived at Rothery Terrace, Bradford. 
She seems surrounded with foreign influences. No. 12 
Rothery Terrace, Bradford. 



148 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

J. A. H. : I don't know her, [But will inquire. No 
Rothery Terrace known to me at present, and no 
Nicholsons.] 

B. : Does ta know somebody called Gurney ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

B. : Seems a man fond of writing ; surrounded a 
good deal with intellectual men. Now there's a 
beautiful man of seventy-five, very white hair, clean- 
shaved, very spiritual, holding a volume towards you. 
On this book is " Art Journal "; underneath " Samuel 
Carter Hall." A very beautiful gentleman. Very 
much interested. Are ta fond of pictures ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

B. : He was a very good, religious man. 
J. A. H. : I have heard of him. 

B. : He seems to be encouraging you to write 
something, to keep on writing, not to overdo it, but 
to keep on. They are helping you. 

J. A. H. : I am much obliged to them. 
B. : Give way to the impressions. 

[All this about Gurney and S. C. Hall may be 
accountable to the medium's own memory stores. 
But it is curious that there was no mention of 
Myers, who is almost sure to be more prominently 
in a spiritualist's thoughts than Sidgwick, or 
Gurney, or even Hodgson. And it is noteworthy 
that at my last sitting with a trance medium 
[Peters, March 3rd, 1916 : reported later] the 
S.P.R. group appeared, Myers included. Hodgson 
knew of my existence, for a few letters passed 
between us just before his death in America in 
1905. His age was fifty, as said. My books have 
been published since his death.] 
Are ta fond of studying different religions ? 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 149 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

B. : Tha'rt trying to get the best out of all of 'em. 
Are ta fond of reading Indian religion, Eastern ? 

J, A. H. : Yes. 

B. : There seems to be an Indian priest in the sur- 
roundings. He is showing us a book, but I can't 
make head or tail of it. Seems to be something about 
India or Indian religion. Man has a very black skin, 
black moustache, long, flowing robes, and a turban 
with diamonds at the front. Seems to come in your 
surroundings. Mohammedan religion. He is going like 
this [bowing and making three hand-sweeps down- 
ward in front of him], and saying : " Dlah Allah Illah " 
— something like that, and bowing three times. He 
is impressing you on ancient religion. 

[Mohammedanism seems an unfortunate selec- 
tion for an " ancient " religion ! ] 
Are ta fond of old castles ? 

J. A. H. : Not specially. 

B. : I'm sorry we haven't done better ; we have 
to do the best we can. 

J. A. H. : You've done all right, and I thank you. 

B. : Well, we've got all we can for to-day. This 
lad here [medium] isn't in the best of trim after his 
work yesterday. Good-bye, now, and God bless you. 
[Shakes hands.] 

J. A. H. : Good-bye, and God bless you, too. 

Medium was himself again in about two minutes, 
after muttering a good deal of a language unknown 
to me (or gibberish). I asked about this when he was 
normal, and he said he had an African control who 
helped Old Billy when the latter had difficulty in 
getting in or out. On this occasion, medium said be 
felt as if he had been very deep. Knows nothing of 



150 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

what has been said during trance. I told him Dr. 
Richard Hodgson had been, and asked if he knew 
the name. He replied : " "Wasn't it a Dr. Hodgson 
who sat with Mrs. Piper so much ? But 1 didn't 
remember his first name." 

In the report I have not reproduced the dialect 
carefully. Sometimes when " tha " was said (for 
" thou " or " thee ") I wrote the shorthand logogram 
for " you " for speed's sake. Also I wrote " she " 
when Billy used the Lancashire equivalent " hoo." 
But I have not edited the report itself. I have copied 
it verbatim, to-day, September 12th, 1916. 

The medium in his normal state speaks quite good 
English, though he is almost entirely self-educated. 
He is keenly interested in botany of a general kind — 
trees and flowers in an amateur way — and says he 
thinks he could name and tell something about any 
tree that grows in England. But he has a modest 
and pleasant manner, and I fully believe that he is 
entirely honest and veracious, and a quite excellent 
man all round. 

6 gAfter a cup of tea he left at 4.15 on his way home 
to Blackburn. 

Note: September 13th, 1916. — This morning I 
received from Mr. Tyrrell a letter of which the following 
is a copy : 

54 Whalley Banks, 

King Street, Blackburn. 
September 12th, 1916. 
Dear Mr. Hill, 

I arrived home last night at 10.30, feeling 
rather tired. But the reason I am writing you is be- 
cause I had a very strange influence hovering about, 
which I could not understand. A feeling of dis- 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS igx 

appointment, as if someone had wanted to manifest 
their presence but had not been able to do so. I felt 
very uneasy all the way coming home on the train. 
I could neither read nor think ; the peculiar influence 
seemed to dominate my whole being. So on reaching 
home I casually mentioned the matter to my wife, 
how uneasy I felt. So we suggested having a private 
sitting and let Billy Matthews come and see if he could 
enlighten us. So having had a very light supper, we 
sat after 11 o'clock till nearly midnight, and this is 
what we got. Billy told my wife that two spirit forms 
had followed me home ; they had tried to manifest 
their presence at your home, but Billy was not able 
to get in rapport with them, because the other influ- 
ences were stronger, and he said I was rather nervous, 
which prevented him from using me to the best 
advantage, and I am afraid if I had known and read 
your articles in Light and The Two Worlds I should 
have been more nervous still. 

[In questioning him as to whether he had ever heard 
of me, I asked if he saw Light and The Two Worlds, 
where my name often occurs. He said he rarely sees 
Light, but has taken The Two Worlds for many years. 
However, my name has not been prominent in it — I 
have written only one article for it, and though long 
reviews of my books appeared, that is a few years 
ago — and it is not surprising that my name recalled 
nothing to Mr. Tyrrell.] 

I enjoyed reading the article in Light on prayer and 
telepathy, culled from Bibby's Annual. It took me a 
while to find the article in The Two Worlds, as I kept 
looking for your signature along with the article. But 
there wasn't any name attached to article which pre- 
sume must be yours, the one called " Spiritualism the 



152 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Comforter." Let me say I read it before. But thought 
it was Mr. Morse's article. There wasn't any name 
to it. 

[He got the wrong one : mine was headed by my 
name.] 

I take it from the article that you must be a member 
of the Psychical Research Society, and, candidly, 1 
have always had a natural antipathy to psychical re- 
searchers. I read one of their books, over twenty years 
ago, and I thought they were too cold and critical, and 
had not much sympathy for mediums. They don't 
give sensitives much help, their feelings are too acrid 
and that feeling causes more difficulty in getting 
along. A medium is better when he feels comfortable 
and gets used to the sitter. Well now, about the two 
spirit forms : the one was a lady, who came with a 
gentleman, and Billy says judging from the magnetic 
link there were strong links of relationship, probably 
man and wife, but we don't know. The lady was about 
fifty-four years of age and very beautiful, with slight 
wavy hair and very pale in features. She came in her 
beautiful spirit robe. The control said the gentleman 
appeared to be about sixty-six years of age. Billy 
did not describe him, as the brightness of the lady 
seemed to overshadow him. Billy thinks they must 
have been passed into spirit life a long time, because 
they had thrown off all earth's conditions, and appeared 
very bright. They gave Billy their names as Bannister 
Hill and Mary Hill. They wished their love to be 
conveyed to you and your sister, and they wish it 
to be understood they are helping you both when they 
can. Of course I send you this for what it is worth, 
we do not guarantee anything. Well, now let me 
say that I have enjoyed reading your articles, and 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 153 

now don't [think] you were very dreadful and I may 
think a wee bit better of psychical researchers. I don't 
know all you got yesterday, only what you choose to 
tell me. But somehow or other I feel a little bit 
sick at taking your money, as you may think I am 
like the rest of mediums, that I am after all I can get. 
But it is not quite true. I could have coined money 
this last thirty years but have steadfastly refused it, 
yet hundreds of times I have been in want of a shilling. 
What a good ride it is from Thornton for 2d. We 
have to pay a penny for every ride in Blackburn. Let 
me say I quite enjoyed the tea with your sister. Kindly 
thank her for making [me] feel so comfortable and 
accept all good wishes yourself, from yours in the cause. 
But don't ask me to sit for any more psychical Re- 
searchers, they generally give me a fright. 

T. Tyrrell. 

My father was Bannister Hill, and he died October 
22nd, 1898, aged sixty-six. His name has not appeared 
in any of my former writings, nor his age, nor date of 
death. Mr. Tyrrell could not have normally known 
these facts unless he had found our vault in one of 
the half-dozen cemeteries in Thornton (a private one 
belonging to a chapel), and this would not have been 
a very easy matter. 

My mother, Mary Hill, died November 19th, 1886, 
aged fifty-four. She was pale, had been good-looking 
in youth, though perhaps hardly beautiful, except 
as regards her eyes. Tyrrell's use of the word might, 
however, refer to her spiritual appearance. She was 
certainly a beautiful soul. As to evidentiality, it is 
to be noted that her name and age appeared in my 
book, "New Evidences," in a report of a sitting with 
Wilkinson ; and though Tyrrell says he had never 



154 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

heard of me or my books (and I believe in his supra- 
liminal honesty), we cannot accept as strongly evidential 
anything that has appeared in print, especially if it 
appeared in a book likely to be read by many spiritual- 
ists. Mediums may hear such books quoted and dis- 
cussed, even if they do not read them ; and we must 
allow for subliminal memory. 

On the other hand, I think it improbable to the 
point of incredibility that Tyrrell had ever heard of 
my father or of James Brearley, so I do not accept 
the subliminal memory theory of the Mary Hill episode. 
I provisionally accept the spirit-theory in all three 
cases as being the most probable. 

Note : September 15th, 1916. — I have now looked 
up S. C. Hall in Chambers's Encyclopaedia, and find 
that the full name is Samuel Carter Hall, as stated. 
He was born in 1800, died 1889 ; founded and edited 
The Art Journal (1839-1880), and did much other 
literary work. He was a prominent spiritualist, and 
was the first chairman of the British National Asso- 
ciation of Spiritualists, in 1874 (see Podmore's "Modern 
Spiritualism," ii., p. 169). I knew the name only as that 
of a man who had sat with D. D. Home. I know 
nothing of his personal appearance. It seems correct 
that he was a particularly good and philanthropic 
man. But of course all such details must be assumed 
to be known (subliminally, even if " forgotten ") to 
mediums, and to spiritualists generally, so they cannot 
be regarded as evidential. 

Note: September 16th, 1916. — I learn to-day that 
James Brearley lived and died in Ford Street, but 
have not yet ascertained the number. His age was 
eighty-three or eighty-four. 

Note : September 19th, 1916. — I learn to-day that 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 155 

the Rev. George Edmondson was minister for some 
years at Manchester Road Baptist Church, now called 
Marshfield Baptist Church. Also that a hunchback 
named Mickey (surname not yet ascertained) sold 
newspapers in Market Street, Bradford, dying two or 
three years ago. My informant knew him personally. 
Also that an Alice Nicholson was a member of the 
Milton Spiritualists' Church, Manningham, Bradford. 
She did platform work for various Spiritualist Societies, 
so Tyrrell probably knew her or knew of her. Am 
seeking further details about all three. 

Note : September 22nd, 1916. — After further inquiry 
I find to-day that the house in Ford Street in which 
James Brearley lived and died is No. 7. Ford Street 
is not on or near the route which the medium traversed 
on his way here from the station ; though, even if 
it had been, it would not have given him the name 
and description of James Brearley. No relative of the 
latter is now living at No. 7 or in the street. 

The beard is corroborated to-day by two other 
people who knew him well, thus confirming the medium's 
statement, which at the time I doubted. 

Thus every fact given about James Brearley, whom 
I have no reason to believe the medium had ever heard 
of, turns out true ; except the chess-playing. This 
was the medium's own inference from the chess-board 
which the spirit was showing ; the fact seems to be 
that neither Brearley nor his friend played chess, but 
that my friend Townley, wanting to photograph the 
two friends, posed them at a chess-table and produced 
a particularly good picture, a copy of which hangs in 
the club. This club, it is necessary to state, is not 
on or near the route covered by the medium in coming 
here, and it is not on a public road or prominent in 



156 PSYGHIGAL INVESTIGATIONS 

any way. It is a village club ; all the members know 
each other, and any stranger coming and making 
inquiries would be suspected and discouraged. I am 
sure the medium did not get his information there. 

Note : September 25th, 1916. — I have now obtained 
copies of some newspaper issues, and append cuttings : 

Bradford Daily Telegraph (Wednesday, January 14th, 
1914) : 

" LITTLE MICKEY " DEAD 
King of Bradford Newsboys 



Popular Figure Removed 

Michael Scannon, better known in the newsboys' fraternity 
as " Little Mickey," the King of the Bradford newsboys, has 
just died at his home at 22 Sun Street. 

" Mickey " had for years taken up his stand near the 
Midland Railway Station and the Exchange, and was un- 
doubtedly the best known of all the newsboys. Though a 
cripple from birth, suffering from a spinal curvature, his 
genial disposition won for him a large circle of friends amongst 
Bradford business gentlemen. 

He was the most prominent figure in the annual newsboys' 
trip to Cleethorpes, and he was quite as well known at that 
seaside resort as in his native city. " Mickey " always led 
the procession, playing a small kettledrum, and he always 
entertained his comrades after dinner with songs and whistling 
selections. 

The members of the Bradford Newsboys' Trip Com- 
mittee are making arrangements for the funeral, which will 
probably be the biggest any newsboy has yet received, for 
" Little Mickey " was the most popular of all our paper 
sellers. 



Bradford Daily Telegraph (Wednesday, January 14th, 

1914): 

Edmondson. — Jan. 12th, 1914, at 25 Marshfield Street, the 
Revd. George Edmondson, aged 76 years. Funeral will 
leave the house on Friday, the 16th inst., at 1.15, for 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 157 

service in Marshfield Baptist Chapel. Interment at 
Bowling Cemetery. Friends please accept this intimation. 

Bradford Weekly Telegraph (Friday, January 23rd, 1914) : 

REV. G. EDMONDSON 
The funeral took place on Friday, from his residence at 
Marshfield Street, Manchester Road, Bradford, of the Rev. 
George Edmondson, pastor of the Marshfield Baptist Chapel. 
Mr. Edmondson, who was 76 years of age, came to Brad- 
ford from Horsforth 47 years ago, to take up the pastorate 
of Ebenezer Chapel, a position which he held for very many 
years. When the Marshfield Chapel branched off in 1903 
he became minister there, and he filled the position with 
much acceptance. Though never a prominent public man, 
he had a wide circle of close personal friends by whom he 
was most highly esteemed. . . . 



BRADFORD NEWSBOY'S FUNERAL 
Once again " Little Mickey " has joined in the procession 
of newsboys and shoeblacks — once again, but for the last 
time, alas ! Never more when the boys have their annual 
trip to Cleethorpes and go merrily marching along the 
street will " Mickey " lead them. Never again when they 
cross the Midland Station yard will the many Bradford 
business men who were his friends spare a willing copper "s 
for the poor, brave, little twisted figure with the wan, but 
smiling face. And never more will his pals in the streets 
gather around him to hear him sing and whistle, for on 
Saturday there was no little fellow to lead the procession, 
but a poor little coffin was carried high in the midst of it. 

After twenty-two years of pain, Michael Scannon, a 
cripple from birth, has finished his fight, and with the kindly 
thoughts of those who knew him best, those who lived with 
him, those who tended him in his sufferings, and knew his 
patient and cheerful spirit, and those who befriended him, 
he has passed where he will know no more earthly pain or 
trouble. 

" Little Mickey " was the friend of all, and on Saturday 
many who had known him gathered to bid the last farewell 



158 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

as he passed on his final journey. By noon Sun Street, North 
Wing, where he lived, was filled with neighbours and friends, 
and as the little coffin was carried down the street to the 
hearse by some of his comrades, there were many signs of 
mourning. The procession, which was headed by about 
forty or fifty newsboys and shoeblacks, and joined by many 
friends, passed along Captain Street, Barkerend Boad, and 
Otley Boad to Undercliffe Cemetery, and all the way there 
were those who knew him to watch him go. At the cemetery, 
also, where a service was conducted at the graveside by 
Father O'Shaugnessy, of St. Mary's, East Parade, there were 
many friends gathered. . . . 

The foregoing extracts make it clear that in the 
cases of the Rev. George Edmondson and Mickey Scan- 
non the evidence for their spiritual agency is not 
much stronger than in the case of S. C. Hall, Miss Cobbe, 
and the S.P.R. men named, for they were well known, 
and their deaths and funerals were recorded rather 
fully in the local newspapers. If Mr. Tyrrell hap- 
pened to see the Bradford Weekly Telegraph of January 
23rd, 1914, we must assume that any of its contents 
might remain in his subliminal memory, and facts 
such as the names of Mr. Edmondson and Mickey 
Scannon, with their addresses and occupations, may 
be thus accounted for. Moreover, in the weekly paper 
just mentioned, the account of Mr. Edmondson's 
funeral is immediately above that of Mickey's, and in 
this latter there occurs the phrase, " poor, brave, little 
twisted figure," which seems suspiciously like the pro- 
bable source of Billy's phrase " poor twisted body." 
On the other hand, Billy described Mr. Edmondson's 
personal appearance, and this counts for evidence if 
it is correct, for I have found no description of him 
in the newspaper notices. I am making further 
inquiries. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 159 

To guard against misapprehension, I must make 
it clear that I am not imputing conscious deceit to 
Mr. Tyrrell. I believe in his absolute honesty and 
veracity. I have asked him whether he knows the 
names of the Rev. George Edmondson, Mickey Scanlon, 
or some such name, and Alice Nicholson, and he replies 
that the first two are quite new to him, though he 
has a dim recollection of having heard the third. I 
accept this, as regards his conscious recollection ; but 
unfortunately we have to allow for subconscious 
memories also, and it is certain that we subconsciously 
know many things which we have " forgotten." And, 
since it seems that a trance- control cannot always 
distinguish between the medium's memory stores and 
messages really from " the other side," we cannot 
safely take as spirit-evidence anything that the medium 
is at all likely to have known. And though it hardly 
seems likely that Mr. Tyrrell, living forty miles away 
at Blackburn, would happen to see a local paper of 
a town in which he has no special interest, the possi- 
bility is still just sufficient to weaken somewhat the 
spiritistic theory in the case of the two men in question. 

October 4th, 1916. — I wrote to Mr. Tyrrell, asking 
whether he ever sees any Bradford newspapers, and 
he replies that he does not. He thinks a local 
Blackburn library takes the Yorkshire Post, but he 
never reads it, for he has no particular interest in 
Yorkshire news. He further states that he had been 
in Bradford only once before his visit to me ; on that 
occasion, which was in July, 1915, he arrived in the 
town at noon on a Sunday, spoke at a spiritualist 
meeting in the evening, caught an early train home 
on Monday morning, and saw no newspaper during 
the time of his short stay in Bradford. 



160 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

It seems, therefore, unlikely that subliminal mem- 
ory is the correct explanation of the Edmondson and 
Mickey incidents ; particularly in view of the fact that 
no such explanation could account for the appearance 
of James Brearley and my father. Perhaps Mr. 
Edmondson and Mickey made friends with each other 
because they went over almost at the same time. It 
does not seem an unreasonable supposition. But 
readers will form their own judgment from the facts, 
which I have given as fully as possible. 

Note : October 4th, 1916.— To-day I learn that 
(Mrs.) Alice Nicholson lived at 12 Rothesay Terrace, 
Bradford ; evidently the control made a small mis- 
take in getting it " Rothery Terrace." In The Two 
Worlds for September 15th, 1916 — four days after my 
sitting — there appeared the following notice : 

In Memoriam 

Nicholson. — In loving remembrance of a dear wife and 
mother, Alice Nicholson, 12 Rothesay Terrace, Brad- 
ford, who passed on September 18th, 1913. — Albert 
Nicholson and Family. 

No doubt her death was notified in the same paper, 
which Mr. Tyrrell sees regularly ; and, though he re- 
members hardly anything about Mrs. Nicholson, a 
subliminal memory explanation is not impossible. 
But I think it fair to add that subliminal memory 
theories have been greatly overworked, and that the 
spiritistic view is at least as likely, particularly when 
supported by incidents such as those about my father 
and James Brearley, which cannot be reasonably 
explained by subliminal memory. Moreover, I have 
ascertained to-day that the description of the personal 
appearance of both Mr. Edmondson and Mrs. Nicholson 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 161 

is absolutely exact ; and this seems to require an 
explanation beyond the newspaper notices. 

Note: October 10th, 1916.— I now find that the 
photograph of the two old men was reproduced in the 
Bradford Daily Telegraph of January 10th, 1914, with 
a paragraph — on another page — in which Brearley's 
strong voice is mentioned, and eccentricity hinted at. 
His address is given also. Consequently, considered 
strictly, the evidentiality of the Brearley incident 
disappears. Lapsed memory will account for it, as 
well as for the Mr. Edmondson and Mickey incidents ; 
that is, if we assume that Tyrrell had at some time 
seen these various newspaper accounts. There re- 
mains the description of Mr. Edmondson, and my 
father's name and age ; and if these were from the 
other side so may the others be. Suspense of judgment 
seems the correct attitude. 

Note : October 20th, 1916. — James Brearley's club 
crony died this morning. This perhaps lends a little 
weight to the spiritistic interpretation of the incident. 
Brearley may have been waiting about for his friend, 
and may have really been present at my sitting. The 
case, on this view, is a parallel of the Leather — Drayton, 
Mr. and Mrs. Walkley, and Charlton — Charlton meeting 
cases already described. 

December 11th, 1916. — I have lately got into touch 
with an able and experienced investigator, Dr. F. H. 
Wood, of Blackburn, who has had many sittings with 
Mr. Tyrrell, and is therefore more competent to estimate 
his powers than I am. Dr. Wood is quite sure that 
" Billy " does not use the medium's memory-stores, 
either consciously or unconsciously ; and that the 
information said to come from spirits does really 
come from the other side. He kindly allows me to 

L 



i6 2 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

quote the following piece of evidence from one of his 
own sittings. I have disguised the names, lest the 
child's mother should be caused pain. 

" On May 13th, 1915, Mr. Tyrrell described to us 
the spirit form of a lady who brought with her a little 
boy, aged five. Her name was not given, but the 
boy was said to be ' the child of . . . ' — here the 
clairvoyant listened, and said, ' It sounds like Samuel 
Browning, but I'm not quite sure. At any rate, he is 
a policeman, and he lives at No. 6, Henry Street, 
Leyton [a small town a hundred miles away]. The 
mother of the child is grieving sadly. He died of 
pneumonia. Will someone tell her that he is not 
" dead " at all, in the sense she thinks he is ? He 
is here, and we are looking after him. She mustn't 
grieve so much.' 

" On July 19th, 1916, I visited Leyton, and found 
that there was a Henry Street. I went to No. 6, but 
no one was at home. I tried next door, and the neigh- 
bour gave me the following information. The people 
at No. 6 are named Brownlow. The father is a con- 
stable. His name is Stanley. (The medium seems 
to have misheard Samuel Browning for Stanley Brown- 
low, but he got the address correctly.) I asked for 
information about the mother. ' She has gone away,' 
the neighbour said ; ' health completely broken down 
since her little boy died, six months ago, of pneumonia. 
He was only five.' She went on to say, quite sponta- 
neously and without any suggestion from me : ' I 
have often been to the cemetery with Mrs. Brownlow, 
and it was pitiful to see the way she cried and fretted 
over the little grave. He was her only boy,' The 
rest of the story as to how I tried to bring comfort 
to the poor mother's heart need not be told here, but 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 163 

it may be pointed out, on the evidential side, that none 
of the sitters knew of the existence of the Brownlow 
family, and that to the best of my belief the medium 
shared their ignorance and had never been in that 
town. I am quite sure about this last point. 

" The question arises : ' Why did the message come 
through to me ? ' I think there is a sort of link. It 
happens that my boyhood was spent at Leyton, though 
I have no reason to think the medium knew that. No 
one belonging to my family has lived there since 1904. 
Two of my brothers are buried in the same cemetery 
as the child. It seems as if perhaps one of my loved 
ones, witnessing the mother's grief at an adjoining 
grave, interested himself with the object of obtaining 
some consolation for her. — F. H. Wood (Mus. Doc.)." 

This seems to me a good case, and Dr. Wood has 
kindly allowed me to see records of others almost 
equally striking. I have also heard details recently 
of other successfully - evidential incidents through 
Tyrrell's mediumship, and on the whole I am now 
disposed to put a spiritistic interpretation on the 
results of my own sitting with him. If he ever reads 
this, I hope he will not feel it to be a lukewarm judg- 
ment. I merely follow the facts, and must not go 
farther than the facts point. If I had been able to 
have further sittings, I quite believe I should have 
obtained further facts which would have convinced 
me of spirit-origin. One sitting is not enough to base 
anything on very definitely. My conviction of other- 
side agency in Wilkinson's case is complete. I have 
no doubt about it whatever. But it has grown gradu- 
ally, and is the result of many carefully recorded and 
studied sittings extending over a period of years. 
From all I can hear, Tyrrell's mediumship is of the 



164 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

same order, and I regret that I have not been able — 
mainly through distance — to obtain further evidence 
through him. 



SITTING 12 

Friday, September 22nd, 1916. Present, J. A. II. and 
medium (Mr. A. Wilkinson). 

The medium arrived at 2.25 p.m., and we talked 
about his recent tours in Durham and elsewhere for 
about a quarter of an hour. Then a few minutes' 
silence, and clairvoyance began. 

A. W. : There is some youngish man about. He 
would be about thirty-one or thirty-two. He builds 
up in the corner there. Long face, pale. Biggish nose. 
It's a peculiar thing, one side of his clothes seems light, 
the other dark. It is the light from the window, I 
suppose. Lister is the name I get. That might be a 
surname. Lister Holden or Holden Lister. These two 
names go together. Thirty-one or thirty-two when he 
passed away. Been gone some years ; all about his 
head looks quite subtle, because he has been away 
some time. 

J. A. H. : Quite right, that. 

A. W. : You see, it's two surnames, and I can't 
tell which comes first. There is a very old woman 
with this man ; very old, quite feeble. Not been long 
gone ; clothes quite dense, fabric very real. She stands 
up as if he were supporting her. There's something 
over her head, a cap. Quite venerable ; eighty-five 
or eighty- six. Something to do with this man. Name 
Amelia. She was very old. She has a fancy apron 
on over her dress — a lace apron. Rather particular 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 165 

in her dress. [Takes pencil and paper and -writes 
" Lister Holden " and " Amelia."] 

[Amelia Holden, who died in 1910 at something 

well over eighty and who appeared for the first 

time at my last sitting with Wilkinson (August 2nd, 

1916, p. 130), was wife of a cousin of my maternal 

grandfather. Lister Holden, here named for the 

first time, was her son, who died, as I afterwards 

found, in 1889, aged thirty-one. I know nothing 

of his appearance, but I learn that a long face 

and big nose were characteristic of his father, 

who died in 1888, so perhaps the son had them 

also. The cap and apron are correct for Mrs. 

Holden. She dressed well.] 

Have you known somebody, a farmer, named 

Lee ? There are always farmers come here ; I feel 

as if I were about cattle and hay. I get the name of 

Lee distinctly. Not a very old man ; older than you, 

but not very old. I am sure he has been about a farm. 

That young man and that old woman must be 

related to each other. They belong to each other. 

Related. 

[Yes, mother and son (Holdens), as explained. 
My father had an uncle named Lee who appeared 
at my last sitting with Wilkinson, August 2nd, 
1916, p. 129.] 
There is a man here, tall, no hair about his mouth, 
biggish face, elderly, sixty or sixty-one or a bit more. 
Name, Jonas Hey. A long time passed away ; twenty 
years or more — more than that. Did you know him ? 
[Writes " Jonas Hey."] 
J. A. H. : Yes. " 

[Not sure that I did. A Jonas Hey certainly 
lived in Thornton, dying perhaps twenty years 



166 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

ago, but I do not remember his appearance. My 
father knew him. 

Later : Have found someone who knew him. 

Description is fairly accurate, but my informant 

thinks J. H. did not shave any part of his 

face.] 

I am taken to a farm again. A lot of people called 

Hey come to you. 

[Mother's maiden name. But I think Jonas 
Hey was no relation ; certainly not a near one.] 
This man might be confused with another. [This 
turned out correct : evidently those on the other side 
saw I was going wrong. The J. H, intended was a 
relative of mine whom I never knew.] He has 
been deceased many years ; you would only be very 
young when he died. Do you know somebody called 
Whetley ? 

J. A. H. : I don't think so. 

A. W. : Have you known somebody called Lee 
Whetley ? 

J. A. H. : I know who that is. 

A. W- : There might be two persons, one Lee and 
one Whetley, connected with a farm. I should think 
that man Lee died rather suddenly. I can't get away 
from somebody living — somebody living that he has 
known. He probably left a wife alive. There is some 
attraction about a farm. 

J. A. H. : I should like to know what he wants. He 
came last time, and may be trying to complete some 
information. 

A. W. : I didn't think he had been before. 

[It was my mistake. I was thinking of old 
Thomas Lee, who did come at the August 2nd 
sitting. But obviously the man Wilkinson was 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 167 

talking about was Whetley Lee, Thomas's son, who 
had not been mentioned before. He (Whetley) 
lived at a farm a mile and a half from here — a 
very lonely and out-of-the-way place, far from main 
roads, and very unlikely to have even been seen 
by Wilkinson, who lives in the opposite direc- 
tion. Whetley died rather suddenly about four 
years ago, leaving a wife. I think she is still at 
the farm, but am not sure. It is a long way from 
the farm where her father-in-law lived, in the 
next valley.] 
There's a lot of people here to-day. A young man 
between thirty and forty, dressed up in style like a 
parson. Black clothes. Can't see his face, but am 
impressed with his clothes ; black. Somebody who 
hasn't been here before. Cockin is the name. 
J. A. H. : Right. 

A. W. : I am inclined to think he was in an 
atmosphere where parsons were. 

J. A. H. : I wonder what his first name was. 
A. W. : There's a very old man with him now, white 
hair, over eighty, stoops, was tall and well-made. His 
name is Joseph. He is Joseph Cockin, and the young 
man is with him. 

[Medium takes pencil and paper, and writes 
" Joseph Cockin."] 
J. A. H. : Quite right. 

A. W. : The younger has been gone longest ; he is 
more subtle. The old man would be eighty — quite. 
He has not been a parson, I think, but the young 
man had something to do with them. Funny name — 
Joseph Cockin ! The young man's name must have 
been Cockin, but I don't get any other name. He 
has been longer away. 



i63 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

It's a wonder to me that you don't see or feel these 
people, 

[Rev. Joseph Cockin was minister at a Con- 
gregational Church in Thornton for a few years. 
He either left or died about 1886. I have had no 
knowledge of any of the family for a long time. 
I should think it pretty certain that Wilkinson had 
never heard the name before. Certainly I had 
never mentioned these people to him ; they are 
very rarely in my mind. My grandfather and 
grandmother went to " old Cockin' s " church (he 
would die at about eighty), but we did not, and 
I do not remember him. I do not know who the 
young Cockin can be. It is curious that Wilkinson 
thought that Joseph was not a minister, although 
he brought that sort of atmosphere.] 
A. W. : Wasn't it a parson or a schoolmaster who 
came before ? [Evidently referring to Mr. Waldron, 
sitting of August 2nd, p. 132.] 

J. A. H. : Yes. I wish he would come again. 
A. W. : He doesn't seem to be about to-day. 
That old man looked as real as life. You are sure 
you don't feel any worse after I have been ? 
J. A. H. : Quite sure. 

A. W. : Those are very curious names, Whetley Lee 
and Joseph Cockin. I think this old gentleman was 
rather religious ; rather pious, in his way ; would be 
about chapel life. 

J. A. H. : He was a minister. 
A. W. : Was he ? Did you know him ? 
J. A. H. : I knew of him. He was rather before my 
time. My grandfather knew him very well. 

A. W. : You have never had any communication 
from the lady of the glove ? 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 1C9 

J. A, H. : No, except what you got. Would you 
like to try now ? 
A. W. : Yes. 

[Gave him a glove of hers, which he handled 
without result for several minutes and then put 
down.] 
I think it is best, after all, to wait for spontaneous 
things. 

That old man — had he some local connexion ? 
J. A. H. : Yes, he was a minister in Thornton. 
A. W. : The young man should have had a name, too. 
J. A. H. : Yes, I wonder what it was. 
A. W. (after pause) : There's some old lady again, 
another old lady. I have seen her here before. Eighty 
or so. Seems as if she moves about the house. I have 
seen these forms mainly in that corner, but she seems 
to be walking round. Name, Mary. Makes me feel 
as if she had some hold on you, some relationship to 
you. She would be eighty-one or eighty-two. Been 
an active woman all her life. Can you make out who 
it is ? 

J. A. H. : Yes ; my grandmother, no doubt. I wish 
she could send a message. 

A. W. : Had she a very big family ? 
J. A. H. : No. Five children, I think. 

[Rather curiously, he credited this grand- 
mother with a large family before.] 
A. W. : I don't think I can get any more. 
After a little general talk, not about the sitting 
or my deceased friends or relatives, the medium left 
to catch the 3.48 train. 

[January 23rd, 1917. — I learn to-day that old 
Mr. Cockin had a son Joseph, a very promising 
young . man who went to Africa as a missionary 



170 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

and died there — before his father's death — aged 
between thirty and forty.] 

TABLE OF SITTINGS, WITH PRINCIPAL NAMES 
AND INCIDENTS 

July 21st, 1914. Sarah, Jonas, Dunlop, Armitage, 
Leather. 

December 14th, 1914. Helen and Benjamin Torring- 
ton, Mary (grandmother), Walker, James 
Bannister, (Edmund) Driver, Ishmael, Purcell 
(Timothy ?). 

January 15th, 1915. Trevor, King, Elias Sidney, 
Moses Young, Mary Bannister, Jowett, Han- 
son (woman connected with a school), Mary 
(mother), woman with limp, Leather, Purcell 
(girl with music, unrecognized), man with long 
pinafore on, forty or forty-two, died suddenly, 
Jonathan Ainsworth, John Hey, Yewton (farm). 

November 19th, 1915 (per Mr. Frank Knight). Ish- 
mael Hey, Sarah, Helen Torrington and a man 
(her husband), father described. 

January 19th, 1916. John (grandfather Hey), Jonas, 
Lewis, Percy Tranter, Drayton, Henry and 
Robert, Whitley. 

February 17th, 1916. Prediction of a good-bye, Mary 

(mother), unrecognized young man H , 

Driver, later Edmund, Mr. Walkley described, 
imminent funeral of old lady (Mrs. Walkley), 
young man's mother (unrecognized), description 
of father pulling cloth over, and of grandfather 
(Hey), James Bannister, Charlton. 

April 12th, 1916. Grandmother Hey described, Jonas, 
Jowett, Verity and Betty Tranter, tall, lame 
woman, Burroughs, Burns, Helen Torrington. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 171 

April 19th, 1916. Description of church, vicar, house 
(Mrs. Napier's), Hanson, Joseph, Yewton 
(farm), John Henry Hanson, Armitage, Leth- 
bridge, Jim Hey, William Bannister, Ishmael, 
Mary (grandmother Hey), prediction of Lon- 
don letter and would-be borrower, Elizabeth, 
Levensley. 

June 5th, 1916. Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Walkley, James 
Hill, young man who died in tragic manner, 
Sarah Hey, Mary, prediction about 3, some 
unrecognized event of May 7th or 17th, 1861, 
Jabez Purcell, Lewis. 

August 2nd, 1916. Thomas and Betty (Lee), John and 
Amelia (Holden), some Clapton or Clapham, 
Thomas Waldron, Pudsey connected with Mr. 
Lund, young man who died suddenly, mentally 
ill, Pudsey man named Joseph, Leather, Sarah 
(Mrs. Leather), Mary (my mother) and her 
father. 

September 11th, 1916. (Medium, T. Tyrrell.) James 
Brearley, Dr. Richard Hodgson, Henry Sidg- 
wick, Gurney, Samuel Carter Hall, Frances 
Power Cobbe, Alice Nicholson, Rev. George 
Edmondson, Mickey Scanlon (Mickey Scan- 
non). 

By letter, Bannister and Mary Hill. 

September 22nd, 1916. (A. W.) Lister Holden, Amelia, 
Whetley Lee, Jonas Hey, Joseph Cockin and 
young Cockin, Grandmother Hey described, 
" Mary." 

A Crucial Test 
It may be that the critical reader, inevitably less 
fully acquainted with all the data than I am, will 



i72 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

still feel a haunting suspicion that, somehow or other, 
Wilkinson's normal knowledge may account for more 
than I think, and may cover at least the cases where 
my own deceased relatives and friends are concerned. 
I am quite sure that it does not, but I recognize that 
a few instances of proof approaching the crucial are 
desirable. I therefore emphasize the quoted facts 
about Elias Sidney, who was unknown to me (pages 
18-21, 25, 26, 68-71, 75-77), about Mr. King, whose 
appearance seemed due to the call of an unexpected 
visitor who was unknown to the medium (pp. 67, 68), 
and, above all, about such cases as those in which spirits 
connected with some recent visitor of mine are described 
and named. Of this last class the case of Mrs. Torring- 
ton (pp. 62-64, 80, 102) is good, but the hardened 
sceptic will explain it by telepathy from me. I there- 
fore give, below, a recent case of this kind in which 
the theory of telepathy from the sitter is excluded. 

In a sitting on November 9th, 1916, there occurred 
the following : — 

A. W. : Did you know somebody called Ruth Robert - 
shaw ? RUTH. 

J. A. H. : I don't remember anybody at the moment. 

A. W. : About sixty-three or sixty-four. She has 
known somebody who has been here. " Ruth Robert- 
shaw " is not a common combination. I saw her per- 
fectly. A crescent-shaped light was over her head, 
and her face was illumined. She would be inclined to 
be rather pious in her way. 

[Quite meaningless to me. Never heard of 
any Ruth Robertshaw.] 

This woman Ruth is no relation to you, 1 think. . . . 
There was a gentleman belonging to her, called Jacob. 
I think he would be her husband. Whoever he was, 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 173 

he was older than her. He would be seventy-three. 
She would be about ten years younger ; it may be in 
the time between them passing away — I'm not sure. 
I don't see him ; I only hear it. 

All this conveyed nothing to me. But previous 
experience warned me not to dismiss it hastily, and 
it occurred to me to write to the last visitor I had 
had, three days before, in case the two people belonged 
to her ; though I thought it unlikely, because she is a 
Miss North, and I knew of no Robertshaws among her 
relatives or friends. She lives at a distance of some 
miles, not in Wilkinson's direction ; and she has never 
met him, I have never mentioned her to him, she is 
not a spiritualist or psychical researcher, and I am 
confident that he does not know of her existence. She 
calls only rarely — perhaps three times in the last year. 
Her reply was : 

You make me feel creepy. Ruth Robertshaw was my 
father's cousin — one of the sweetest women that ever lived. 
She was a beautiful old lady when I knew her, and good. 
Jacob was her husband. The ages given are just about 
right. . . . 

I have since found the exact dates. Ruth died 
in 1888, aged sixty-three ; Jacob died in 1900, aged 
seventy- three. 

The medium also made correct statements of the 
nature of messages from these two people, concerning 
a family related to them but unknown to me, a mem- 
ber of which was said to be ill. All turned out correct. 

I regard this as approaching " crucial " proof of 
supernormality, even for the outsider, if my state- 
ments are believed. To me it is conclusive of some- 
thing beyond either normal knowledge on the medium's 
part or telepathy from me ; and indeed, I can find 



174 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIOiNS 

no satisfactory explanation except the spiritistic one. 
Apparently those on the other side are aware of the 
movements of those in whom they are still interested 
down here, and are in some sense " with " them, even 
to the extent of being perceivable by a sensitive through 
an after- influence left some days before. 

If it is urged that the influence does not bring spirits 
but only establishes a rapport by which Wilkinson was 
able to read the mind of the distant and unknown Miss 
North, I say that only a credulous and superstitious 
person can accept such a hypothesis ; for there is 
little or no evidence for a hypothetical mind-reading of 
that kind. 



SITTING 13 

Hitherto, except for one sitting with Tyrrell, I have 
kept to one series of sittings with the medium A. 
Wilkinson. By way of change, and as illustration of 
a different type of mediumship, I will now quote the 
reports of two sittings with the well-known London 
medium, Mr. A. Vout Peters. They are not evidentially 
very strong, but there are good points here and there. 

March 2nd, 1916. 

Present, J. A. H., M. H. (sister), and medium (Mr. A. V. 

Peters). 

Peters came in from another room, where he had been 

resting, at 2.45 p.m., as arranged. No preliminary talk. 

P. : Have you got anything for me to psychometrize ? 

[J. A. H. handed him a silver box which had 

belonged to Mrs. Napier and, some years earlier, 

to her husband.] 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 175 

Two people have had this before you ; two different 
influences. 

[Correct.] 

A man, fairly tall, broad shoulders, broad forehead, 
hair gone white. Had a fairly good position ; clever, 
quick. Full of human sympathy. Deep insight into 
human nature. A restless feeling, full of energy, 
wanting to come in touch with people. Tremendous 
tiredness before passing away. Position of trust and 
honour. The person who had the box before you did 
not handle it much. Had it put away ; hidden, a 
long time. 

[Fair description. Mr. N. was a country gentle- 
man of independent means : estates in several 
counties.] 

A lady comes. Woman of seventy or seventy-five. 
Rather round-faced, light eyes, hair gone very grey. 
Face rather thin, little wrinkled, longish hands. As 
she comes she brings a sense of force. Suddenly got 
old before she passed over. Feeling of rest. 

[Unrecognized. Mr. N.'s relatives unknown to 
me.] 

Now I am switched off to the man I first described. 
Got tired of everything, but did not show it. Some- 
body he loved had passed away before him. The lady 
comes in incidentally. 

J. A. H. : It is the lady we want to hear from. 
(Meaning Mrs. N.) 

P. : Another man : I should not be surprised if you 
did not know him. Tall, fair, light eyes. Been passed 
over some time. 

Is that old lady your mother ? 

J. A. H. : I think not. 

P. : I want to sit up straight. Man, tall, longish face, 



176 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

broad forehead, hair thin, eyes very blue. I am taken 
back some number of years — perhaps twenty or thirty. 
Clever. Not very happy before he died. Anxiety 
round about him. Whatever the cause of his death, he 
did not want to die. He comes as a side issue. He 
is sympathetic to you. 

M. H. : Is he connected with the box ? 

J. A. H. : You had better put it down ; there are 
many people connected with it whom we don't know 
much about. 

[And in quarters where we could not ask.] 

(P. puts box down and takes J. A. H.'s left hand, 
dropping it after a few sentences.) 

You absorb magnetism immensely. Quick, active 
mentally, mind quickened by not being able to make 
physical exertion. Tremendous will-power : makes weak 
body do the mind's bidding. Dominating the body, 
this will-power would have even overcome the physical 
trouble, if it had been possible at all. You live in the 
world of ideas. The difficulty is to bridge over the 
two aspects of life. Your brain being accustomed to 
work on scientific bases, it is difficult to realize the 
purely psychic side of [? your] nature. Your mind is 
trained in a strong given direction, and the weak 
point is that the spirit cannot express itself as it would. 
There are both advantages and disadvantages in such 
a training. But we are more than mere brain. You 
have a creative mind — want to create things. Illness 
having shattered your early ambitions, you thought 
more into the world of ideas ; getting in touch with 
spiritualism, which at first you did not feel drawn to, 
you saw the importance of life after death, and the 
necessity of bringing it to the front and spreading the 
knowledge. You are able to influence hundreds of 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 177 

people in different countries. Your interests go out to 
hundreds. 

Your work is not yet done. There is greater work 
for you to do in the future than you have any 
idea of. 

How old are you — forty-three ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

[Not evidential. He happened to have been 
told my age.] 

P. : After you are fortj^-five you are going to get 
better. A curious thing will be that when the better- 
ment takes place you will have a feeling of restlessness 
and distress in the lumbar regions. You have no 
trouble there ? 

J. A. H. : No. 

P. : What it means I can't tell. 

Your colour is blue. This is a recent development 
with me, seeing colours. There is blue around you — 
pale blue. What it means I can't tell. Very intense, 
tremendous vibration and force. Tremendous mental 
impetus. Much patience. Your interests go out to 
hundreds of people. 

Spirit people are now building up. 

Lady here, fairly tall, longish face, hair grey, nose 
not large, lips full, hands long. Something on her 
head. Tremendous interest in life. She has a bright 
manner — has, not had, — good housewife, very affection- 
ate and loving. Shrewd and quick in her judgments, 
tremendous memory for the past. Very upright in 
carriage ; certain amount of pride — not pride of race, 
but proper pride. A pretty woman when young. 
Comes very close to you. Ripe old age when she 
passed over. Been ailing a little, but not very ill ; no 
great pain. 

M 



178 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

[Fairly good for my maternal grandmother, 
except that I should not have called her markedly 
affectionate. She died aged eighty-one, in 1890.] 
There is a man who passed away, fairly tall, broad 
forehead, hair grey, about seventy. Eyebrows clearly 
marked, nose fairly long and rather broad, lips full, 
strong jaw, broad and thick set when younger, got 
thinner before passing away. Feeble of speech, some- 
thing wrong with breathing apparatus. He is intensely 
interested to get back ; he has not ever given you 
proper evidence of his survival, seems anxious to tell 
you " I am alive, I am alive ! " Had worked tre- 
mendously hard when young. Strong sense of humour. 
Able and ambitious for himself and for others. Is it 
your father ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

[My father died in 1898, aged sixty-six, of 
heart disease, which caused painfully difficult 
breathing and sometimes inability to speak. He 
had an exceptionally broad forehead, very bushy 
eyebrows, was stout in middle life, and indeed the 
whole description is accurate except that his hair 
was not very grey — though it was going grey 
particularly at the front— and that I should not 
have called him ambitious for himself. But he 
was for his children, in whose welfare and success 
he was keenly interested.] 
You are always able to make friends with men. 
I see a man whom you knew when you were about 
thirty-eight. Fairly tall, roundish face, broad fore- 
head, hair dark, A little younger than you. Full 
light moustache. Comes very close to you. Quiet and 
undemonstrative in manner. Not in this house^-away 
from here. You got on well together. The interest 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 179 

was kept up afterwards by correspondence, though not 
very much. The interest slackened, and he passed 
out of your life, except as a memory. You have had 
to let many things slip. Now he is dead, and he comes 
to you. Feeling of restfulness. Perhaps you met him 
at a seaside place, had a happy time together. Quiet 
and restful. Tremendous sense of humour. 

[Unrecognized, but may have some truth in it. 
I have made friends a few times in the way in- 
dicated, but cannot remember anybody whom the 
description would fit.] 

(P. began rubbing his eyes ; tucked up his 
feet in the chair, crossed his legs, and sat Brahmin- 
fashion.) 
I want to 'splain some things. I am Moonstone. I 
will sit like this. You are not easy to read ; you wrap 
yourself up as in a cloak. Your life has great limita- 
tions. You want to obtain knowledge, to help others. 
It is difficult for your own people to come back and 
give you things in the minute manner desired. 

You never was quite strong right from the early 
times. You always want to do things very thoroughly. 
What laid you on one side was not so much that one 
part of the body was affected ; the whole organism 
was strained, and affected one part. A muscle at the 
top of the heart has been hurt and damaged. It is a 
localization of the general sensitiveness. You have a 
curious feeling at the left side, not so much pain as a 
numbness ; sometimes the heart goes quick, then 
subsides and feels as if it were going to stop, and all 
the blood leaves the head. Faintness. Is it not so ? 
J. A. H. : Mostly right. But not the faintness. 
Moonstone : I see no reason why you should not 
recover. As you advance to fifty the trouble will 



180 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

affect you less. You have drawn on your reserve 
strength for mental power. You have now learnt 
how to save up your reserves. You will get better. 

A lady conies who passed into spirit life many years 
ago. Medium height, roundish face, dark hair, lips 
full, forty-five to fifty. Hair partly grey. Suffered a 
great deal internally. Cancer or tumour. She is 
building up at the side of you [to M. H.]. Do you 
know her ? 
M. H. : Yes. 

Marie Anne. Not quite right. Marie is right. It 
is Marie something. 

J. A. H. : " Napier," perhaps ? 

[I was thinking, quite wrongly, of Mrs. Napier, 
the late owner of the box previously mentioned, 
whose real name is rather like " Marie " at the 
beginning.] 
Moonstone : No. That is a second name. This 
is a first name — what you call a Christian name. It 
is one word. Marie Anne. No. 
M. H. : Is it Marianne ? 
Moonstone : Marianne. Marion. 

[Seemed rather puzzled, and inclined to Marion. 

" Marianne " — my sister's name — is perhaps less 

familiar to Peters.] 

She was very ill, mademoiselle. Very patient. Six 

months hopeless. Pain disappeared before the end. 

Body could suffer no more. Clever with fingers ; house 

things with her fingers. It is all frag-men-tary. Another 

opportunity. 

I like you [to M. H.]. You are very discriminating, 
and feel things very intensely. You have put your- 
self on one side, yet you have got a great deal of joy 
out of other things. You are not sorry you have 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 181 

lived a little behind the curtain, and you would not 
change places with those who have had a more active 
outward life. Spiritualism will come to you a little 
more personally than it has done. You are going to 
weave it into your life. I like you for putting yourself 
on one side. 

[All very good. My mother is fairly well 
described, and she died of cancer. This has not 
appeared in print before.] 
M. H. (giving ring) : Does this convey anything to 
you ? 

Moonstone : A place apart. This used to be worn 
here [putting it on the wedding-ring finger]. She got 
thinner before death. You got a brooch as well as 
this ring. There was also a watch you gave away. 
You did not want to feel greedy or to cause jealousy. 
This belonged to someone very unselfish, very sweet 
and gentle. Progressive, a good talker, but not like 
my Medie. 

[Laughs ; in fact, general amusement, for 
Peters is a fluent talker.] 
Good memory ; very tactful. Was that your 
mother ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

Moonstone : What a splendid character ! She is 
with you. There was an intense feeling of love for 
the lot of you together, 

[All this is good, of my mother. The ring was 

her wedding-ring, now strengthened and set with 

diamonds. Correct about brooch and watch, but 

no point in " jealousy."] 

You have a brother or a sister on the other side ; 

died in childhood. [Incorrect.] 

You follow what I tell you about your mother ? 



i82 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

J. A. H. : Yes. ; 

Moonstone : Fond of music. Did not play or 
sing, but fond of church music. I see an old church, 
not modern, rather worse for wear. Tower. Rather 
high pews. Did she attend church ? 

J, A. H. : No ; not what is usually understood by 
" church." 

[This was practically telling, but the matter 
seemed unimportant.] 
Moonstone : What you call " chapel " ? 
J. A. H. : Yes. 

Moonstone : She shows me a church, or a place with 
pews. You did not like going [to J. A. H.]. He used 
to preach long sermons. [True, but guessable enough.] 
Did she give you sweets to keep you quiet and 
divide them in two to make them last longer ? You 
used to sit at her right side. 

[First part guessable ; the other two probably 
true — vaguely remembered.] 
The pews had doors. 
J. A. H. : I don't think so. 

[I was thinking of the Thornton chapel, but 
until I was five we lived near Halifax, and the 
pews may have had doors, probably had. 
Moonstone : Died of cancer. Got very tired be- 
fore she died. You was in a bigger house then. 
J. A. H.: No. 

Moonstone : You are going to write something ; 
a bigger book than before. It will reach a wider 
public. But do not hurry it. It will speak more to 
the heart than before ; the others have been to the 
intellect [tapping forehead]. 

You know how he works ? [To M. H., who said 
" Yes."] It will be translated into three languages. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 183 

Now I must go. I am sorry not to have done 
better for you. 

J. A. H. : You have done quite well, and we can 
only do our best. 

Moonstone : Thank you. Do better next time, 
perhaps. Going now. Good-bye, 

X A. H. and M. H. : Good-bye. [4.10 p.m.} 

A little twitching and eye-rubbing, and Peters was 
himself again very quickly — probably within two 
minutes. We talked about things in general, or, rather, 
we let him talk in order that he might come round in 
his own way, for about ten minutes. 

When the name " Marianne " was almost correctly 
got by Moonstone — apparently from my mother — in 
this sitting, both my sister and I thought it was slightly 
evidential, for I had not used her name in his pre- 
sence. But, a day or two afterwards, I seemed to 
remember, dimly, that she once wrote to him at my 
request, when I was down with influenza, telling him 
not to come. (This recent visit was our first meeting 
with him, but I asked him for a date in January, 1915, 
and he was coming if I had not stopped him by a 
telegram of which the letter was a confirmation.) 
Fortunately, I have found the copy of this letter, and 
it is signed in full, " Marianne Hill." The date is 
January 25th, 1915. Hence, though it seems un- 
likely that Peters would consciously remember the 
name, the fact that he has known it removes the at- 
first-supposed evidentiality. 

This is a rather instructive instance of the un- 
trustworthiness of memory. I have a rather good 
memory for details, but at the time of the sitting and 
for some time afterwards I had no conscious recol- 
lection of that letter ; and when I asked my sister 



1 84 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

whether she had written to Peters for me at that time, 
she did not remember having done so. 



SITTING 14 

March 3rd, 1916, with A. V. Peters. Present, J. A. H., 
M. H., mid medium. 

In the following report I omit a few things which 
concern living people only slightly known to me ; 
but the omitted portions do not count either way 
with regard to evidentiality. 
Medium came in at 2.45 p.m. 

P. : Have you anything you specially want me 
to do ? 

J. A. H. : Here is a letter from a friend of mine who 
has lost a relative. I should like to get a message 
for him. But if you don't get anything in a few 
minutes, I will give you something else. 

[I had prepared and written out these sentences, 
and had them before me as I spoke. The letter 
was from Sir Oliver Lodge, and contained nothing 
that would indicate the writer's identity. It was 
entirely about a certain Greek sentence. I had, 
of course, cut off the address and the signature. 
At that time Sir Oliver had never written to 
Peters ; moreover, I gave the letter wrong way 
round, so that he could not read it or get much 
idea of the handwriting. He folded it up in- 
stantly, crushed it into his left palm, and put 
the hand behind him.] 
P. : The man who has written this letter is very 
quick, active, clever. Used to writing. I have a 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 185 

curious feeling of wanting to speak rapidly, though he 
expresses himself deliberately. He has his thoughts 
pretty well pigeon-holed. No loose thinking. No un- 
formed theories of life. Busy, active life. Much kind- 
ness and sympathy, though the heart side is not seen 
by everybody ; rather hidden away. 

This passing away made a tremendous difference to 

the writer's life. Before, he had an amateurish interest 

in spirit return ; it is now different. Great interest. 

. . . Deep, affectionate nature ; firm and lasting in 

friendship. 

I don't understand this : kind of fragmentary ; St. 
Paul comes here. Somebody is laughing and saying, 
"St. Paul." Truly religious ; done a great deal of 
intellectual work, but not like it will be done in future. 
It will be better still. This is the man of the letter. 
He is somebody one can rely on. 

[Sir Oliver has had many communications from 
a soi-disant Myers, through several different 
mediums, and an allusion to St. Paul has been 
used before, as an indication of identity. " St. 
Paul " is, of course, Myers's best-known poem.] 
A lady's influence comes ; affectionate, loving, 
considerate, good housewife. # 

Now there is contact with a young life : medium 
height, broad forehead, light eyes, longish hands, 
athletic build, quick in action and thought, full lips, 
bright and intellectual. Somebody who has passed 
away. His passing came quickly and unexpectedly. 
A feeling of happiness now. This is not his first time 
of communication. He has attempted in three different 
manners. I cannot form my ideas properly ; I can't 
tell why. Queer. I feel unable to express myself in 
English. Do you know why ? 



186 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

J. A. H. : No. 

[Perhaps indication of death abroad. Lieu- 
tenant Raymond Lodge was killed in Flanders.] 

P. : I am to get at this young life. First the writer 
of the letter, then a lady, then the young life. 

Tremendous interest on the other side created by 
this spirit's passing, because there has been work 
stopped. 

[Not understood.] 

In many ways I am sorry [P. seemed to be re- 
peating what was dictated from the other side ; eyes 
shut], and did not want to leave the body. But I 
am not alone, and the work I have started is going to 
reach out to hundreds. . . . Feeling of rest. This 
spirit links up with you. You may not have known 
him — I don't know. But you are going to have 
something to do with it. . . . 

Hang it all ! what has " human personality " to 

do with it ? [Medium jumped up and sat down again.] 

I feel I want to throw back my head and laugh, and 

say : What has " human personality " to do with it ? 

[No doubt everybody knows about Myers's 

great work, Human Personality and its Survival 

of Bodily Death.] 

I like this influence. Pleasant, soothing, nothing 
restless. Now the laughter has gone, and there is a 
sterner note. Tell Father every word. [Said slowly 
and very impressively.] Please put this down. 

Tell Father that the time has come when the veil 
must be dropped. I can do no more. He will have 
to do the rest himself. 

Great love of books, but I would not say he was 
a booky man. Too great interest in life for that. . . . 
It is not only a survival . . . m — . . . can't get 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 187 

it. . . . Not only persistence but intelligent com- 
munication between the two planes of existence. Not 
simply a knocking on the rocks but a great hole has 
now been bored. [This reference to the tunnel meta- 
phor in Sir Oliver's Survival of Man, p. 337, original 
edition, was similarly used as an identity-touch at 
Lady Lodge's first sitting with Peters, when she was 
introduced anonymously, at a friend's house in London. 
See Sir Oliver's recent book, Raymond : A Treatise 
on Life and Death, p. 133.] . . . Do not be surprised ; 
I have come into touch with Huxley. I send my love 
to four, no, five. [It happens that five of the Lodge 
family had had sittings at which Raymond had pur- 
ported to communicate ; and the medium was not 
always Peters. One daughter went with Lady Lodge, 
and the " four, no, five " perhaps indicates that she 
was momentarily overlooked.] 

That's all. [Medium throws crumpled letter on 
table. I gave him a glove of Mrs. Napier's.] 

Restlessness. Careful and particular. Not very 
tall, longish face, broad forehead. Face went thin 
before passing out. Precise, punctual, loving, gentle 
in disposition. Feeling of pain. ... A big tradition ; 
quiet, yet ancestry at the back of it ; outside, a grey 
life, but very active really. Has been able to come 
before, but not as successfully as she wished. Tried 
through two different women, one of them probably 
not a professional medium, for I see her in a com- 
fortable, protected home life. 

Proud of ancestry. Ancestors have done things. 
Patient. Neat in clothing. Religious, but broad- 
minded. 

[Pretty good, but not specific enough to be 
evidential. 



188 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Medium rubs his eyes and tucks his feet up. 
3.20 p.m.] 

Moonstone : Here I come at last ! 

We are here and alive all right, if we haven't got 
troublesome bodies any more. No suffering of that 
sort. The only thing we suffer from is remorse. Know 
what that is ? 

J. A. H. : Yes. 

M. : But it is no good worrying over it, for what 
is done is done. Some people are very apt to sit down 
and think of their sins. No good. I was a Yogi. My 
life was given up to salvation of my soul ; escape from 
reincarnation. It was selfish, in a way ; but it was 
what I had been taught. Repentance is very good ; 
but when you have gone downhill into valley of 
repentance, no good sticking there, worrying with 
remorse. Thing to do is to get up and walk up the 
hill again. So with life on both sides, though you 
have bodies and we haven't. 

But many people think they can advance in life 
better with us than in the body. It is not so. Bodily 
mistakes are best corrected while in the body. Over- 
come the sins of the material world while in that world, 
and help others to do the same. 

You cogitate a lot on met-a-feesical subjects ? 

J. A. H. : Yes, I suppose so. 

M. : Spiritualism has not given you much food for 
thought. The literature has disappointed you. But 
what chance do the mediums have, poor beggars ! 
Majority of them is knocked about from pillar to post, 
pushed round to trot out evidence. What time have 
they, or what chance, for thinking and metaphysics ? 

J. A. H. : True. I sympathize. 

M. : But knowledge is best when worked for. It is 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 189 

best to find it himself. We only really have what we 
have laboured for. 

Spirit world is an extension of earth experience- 
When there is wrong use of anything, best to make 
it right. Easier to right wrong while in physical world. 
But I don't want to talk metaphysics to you, for I 
have plenty to see. 

When you are doing a good hard think, as you 
often do, an idea will come into your mind. You 
analyse it away, away, away. Where has it origin- 
ated ? It has come from our side. You are going to 
write a book. You are able to present an outline of 
the philosophy of spiritualism so that not only people of 
elephantine brains, but ordinary people, can understand. 

Now to pierce the mist, if I can. 

You have got two or three of you a link together. 
You want to bring spiritualism into touch with a better 
class of people. Feeling of wanting to elevate it, and 
let people see that there is a great truth at the back 
of it. Not only you, but four or five persons, mostly 
men. I go away into very busy place, then into a 
suburb district where it has been originated, to link 
on to London. There is a certain Society : they want 
to link it on. Not originated with you, but with 
our side. The time has come when it has to be 
approached differently. Something world-wide useful, 
and not only scientific. 

[Moonstone then began to speak very deliber- 
ately, and most of the leaders of the Society for 
Psychical Research, living and dead, were alluded 
to. For various reasons, this part must be omitted.] 

The disasters that have swept over earth recently 
have stirred up more emotion from your side to ours, 
and made communication easier. 



igo PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

Not good, he tells me. Can't get it. 
There was a man all fireworks, known as Stead. 
Although making many mistakes, he was yet right in 
the main. 

It doesn't matter how communications come, if 
they come. 

Tell Hill [slowly and emphatically], tell Hill — that's 
you — I want this transcribed and sent to O. L., because 
it is for him more than for Hill. 

It is only through him that this regeneration can 
come. If he does not do it, then the means which 
we have at our hands will be removed from our country 
and the time will be past. 

This comes from a group of personalities who are 
behind you [J. A. H.]. 

There is a man in that group with a long face, and 
hair cut in a curious way. Parted in the middle. 
Large eyes, long nose. Moustache, long hand, slight 
body. An air of breeding ; highly intellectual ; deliber- 
ate method. Greek letters ; he was a Greek scholar. 
Very interested in you. A lady to do with him. He 
make A. S. 

[Curiously, I did not think of Professor Sidg- 

wick, perhaps because I knew he had a beard 

and parted his hair at the side. The moustache 

and middle parting would apply to Edmund 

Gurney, who is one of the S.P.R. group on the 

other side.] 

He has been on the other side a fairly long time. 

Interested in this subject intellectually. It ends up 

with " wick " or " dick." 

[This, of course, indicated plainly who was 
intended.] 
J. A. H. : Are you sure about the A ? 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 191 

M. : It looked like A. 

[Dr.. Sidgwick's name was Henry, and it is 
certain that the medium knows or will have 
known it. It is therefore curious that this mis- 
take should be made ; and it is noteworthy that 
if the uprights of H were made carelessly, slant- 
ing inward at the top, the letter would look 
like A.] 
Interested in the subject, but not very heartily in 
it. He now sees the necessity of appealing to the middle- 
class average man. He led a quiet life : would have 
been in a monastery. Lived in a college. This isn't 
the man who gave that message. Oh, no ; the man 
who gave the message is different. 

Languid : retiring — still talking about the college 
man. Used to talking to students. 
J. A. H. : Did he speak fluently ? 

[Thinking of his stammer. Control looked 
puzzled ; guessed— and guessed wrong.] 
M. : Yes. Clearly. Sentences cut like a diamond. 
People would listen to all he had to say. 

They are trying an experiment to-day ; trying to 
get at the man the Medie is afraid of. There's a man 
comes to see the Medie he's afraid of. But don't say 
so to him, for he likes to make out that he has the 
courage of a lion ! 

[At Sir Oliver's first sitting with Peters, 
anonymously, the medium said he was afraid 
of him, but did not know why. Sir Oliver's 
appearance is well known and striking, and he may 
have been recognized ; but in answer to a question 
of mine in October, 1916, Peters said he had no 
idea who that sitter was until after his next visit. 
The sittings were at Peters's London rooms, and 



192 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

were arranged by me for an unnamed friend. I 
think Peters would be expecting some Bradford 
or local man, but, of course, this is only conjecture. 
It is noteworthy that at Lady Lodge's first and 
anonymous sitting with Peters, Raymond said she 
had done right to come " without father," as the 
latter would have frightened the medium out of 
his wits. There is no reason to believe that Lady 
Lodge was recognized by the medium ; this sit- 
ting was not arranged by me but by a London 
friend of Lady Lodge.] 
Who's the old man got funny whiskers ? Square 
forehead, hair caught away here [indicating temples], 
nose full, clean-shaven lips, upper lip hangs over. 
Whiskers here [indicating sides]. Scientific, cold. Not 
a man you would tell your heart troubles to, Very 
clever. Cold, scientific aspect. 

[It is fairly certain that this is meant for Huxley ; 
the description is good, though the coldness — a 
popular view — is probably exaggerated.] 
That man who sent the message. Fairly tall, ex- 
pressive eyes, long nose, face gone thin. Moustache. 
Had led a retired life. Done a lot of teaching. 

[Seems to be a Sidgwick-Gurney-Myers mix-up, 
here.] 
A man not apart from human feelings [Terence, 
Nihil humani, etc.]. Was family man ; married. Not 
coldly scientific. Deeply religious. Interested first in 
spiritualism, attracted by the possibilities in universal 
testimony of the collected hallucinations and of the 
testimony of the subject of being able to receive the 
news of death at a distance [said slowly and in a puzzled 
way, like a child repeating something only half under- 
stood]. 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 193 

J. A. H. : He's talking about the Census of Hallu- 
cinations. [Proceedings, S.P.R., Vol. x.] 

M. : That's it ! 

In meeting a lady, Miss [here I expected Miss Alice 
Johnson's name] X. . . . G. F. . . . X. G. F. . . . 
she helped me only a little [Miss Goodrich-Freer wrote 
at first as " Miss X.," but no doubt the medium knows 
that]. For some time I was beating about the wilder- 
ness . . . not right. For some time I was wander- 
ing about the wilderness until I met the lady who 
helped me. Illness came. A removal came. A journey 
came. Death came. [Myers died in Rome, but no 
removal late in life.] But not the finish ; my book I 
left behind. [Human Personality was published after 
his death.] 

This is a strong message. Now I am told your part 
of the work commences from that point. You were 
attracted by the cross-correspondences [not specially 
true ; I was a member of the S.P.R. earlier than that]. 
Being laid on one side you had time to think and cogi- 
tate. Being brought into touch with other people who 
thought along your intellectual lines — and especially 
with one — you saw the necessity of widening the out- 
look, but you did not see the possibility. Now the war 
has come, so I am linked on to the beginning of the 
message. [Pause.] 

J. A. H. : Does Horace remind you of anything in 
connexion with O. L.? 

[I had prepared this. It gave nothing away, for 
Moonstone had already mentioned O. L., and there 
is much about Horace in connexion with Myers, 
in Proceedings S.P.R. But my aim was to see 
whether anything would come relevant to an un- 
published piece of Piper script which I had seen, 

N 



194 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

in which Myers sent a special message to Sir Oliver, 

embodied in an allusion to an Horatian ode, Bk. 2, 

xvii., saying that he would act Faunus to Sir 

Oliver's Poet ; i.e. shield him from some blow, as 

Faunus shielded Horace from the falling tree. See 

Raymond, p. 90 and foil., and Proceedings S.P.R., 

Part lxxii., p. Ill and foil.] 

M. [after pause] : Can't get his answer. 

Very curious. I see verses. Too indefinite. Verses 

in English language. " O had I a little farm ! " What's 

this mean ? I get a picture of two mice. . . . One 

mouse is very smooth and nice ; hair brushed prettily ; 

fat. The other is rough and not so pretty. A little 

laugh. Somebody is laughing. I am in contact with 

someone who hasn't forgotten how to laugh. 

What has that to do with a book ? A little book, 
covered with leather. Curious title-page, much worn. 
Dear to you through age. It is held up to me. That's 
all. ... 

The power is slackening. 
Medie was a little afraid of you at first. 
Going now. Do not move until the Medie is quite 
right again, for I have had him pretty deep. Good- 
bye. 

[Medium came round with ejaculations. " Oh, 

dear ! Have you ever had gas ? It's like that," 

etc.] 

The answers to my Horace question are curious. I 

was not reminded of anything in particular by either 

the farm or the mice, for I was thinking of Faunus. 

But on looking up I found that the reference is obviously 

to Satire vi. in Book ii. of Horace's Satires, in which 

he describes his little farm and quotes the fable of the 

Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, in connexion 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 195 

with his own preference for country life. Mr. Piddington 
{Proceedings S.P.R., Part lxxii.) sees in all this an 
apposite and evidential Myersian answer to my query, 
for it was on Horace's little farm that the tree fell and 
nearly killed him. A direct reference to Faunus would 
have been attributed to a reading of my mind ; a 
roundabout allusion was therefore made, in order to 
exclude telepathy. 

Another interpretation, to which Sir Oliver Lodge 
inclines, is that the answer refers to Mr. Oliver W. F. 
Lodge — Sir Oliver's eldest son — who has written " verses 
in English language " and had recently moved to a 
" little farm," very like Horace's, near Tintern. If so, 
telepathy from me is quite excluded, for I knew nothing 
of Mr. Oliver Lodge's move. 

The difficulty is, of course, to decide not only which 
of the two is the more probable, but also whether either 
of them is necessary. Most reading people have read 
Horace, and Peters' s own memory-stores, including his 
subliminal strata, may be enough to account for what 
was said, without assuming any external mind. I 
questioned him afterwards about his knowledge of 
Horace, and his conscious recollection seems to be 
almost nil. He thought the Mice fable was in Prior. 
(Prior does refer to it, but does not reproduce it.) 
But we have to allow for subliminal recollection also, 
and it is unsafe to assume total ignorance of anything 
in so widely-read an author as Horace. 

On the other hand, it is to be noted that so far 
as Peters could know, my question was not necessarily 
about Horace the poet at all. It might have been in 
reference to some modern Horace, living or dead, con- 
nected with " O. L." The immediate acceptance of it 
as meaning Horace the poet seems to tell slightly in 



196 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

favour of an interpretation involving the presence and 
action of Myers, who would at once understand what 
I was after. And the manner of the reply was quite 
in character with other cryptic Myersian allusions 
which have come through in other quarters. Moreover, 
although much of the matter of the sitting is common 
knowledge, I think there are many indications of super- 
normality, and even of discarnate agency. In the 
first place, even if Peters knew of my association with 
Sir Oliver Lodge — certainly he had learnt nothing of 
it from me, — it seems unlikely that his psychometry of 
the letter was guesswork. It might have been quite 
off the mark, for I get many letters from people who 
have lost relatives recently. And there are many little 
points which seem possibly evidential. For instance, 
the S.P.R. group is indicated in a curiously ingenious 
and " composite " sort of way. Sidgwick, Myers, and 
Gurney are suggested as shown in the notes. There 
remains Hodgson. And, though his name is not men- 
tioned, the references to laughter, and particularly to 
throwing back the head and laughing, are extremely 
applicable to him, and not specially to the others. 
The references to Sir Oliver's book and to my own 
may be guesses, but they certainly went beyond the 
medium's knowledge. On the whole, then, I think 
that at least some supernormality is justifiably infer- 
rible, and that some amount of other-side communication 
probably took place. 

As to whether Sir Oliver Lodge's or Mr. Piddington's 
interpretation of the Horace incident is the more cor- 
rect, I do not know. It does not matter much, for 
both indicate a Myers source. In fact, they may both 
be true. Myers may have had both Faunus and Mr. 
Oliver Lodge's farm in mind. He knew Mr. O. L. in 



MEDIUM'S LETTERS, AND REPORTS 197 

life, and took a kindly interest in his budding poetic 
faculty ; and it is natural that he should be interested 
in the move of the son of his old friend to a Horace- 
like farm which, moreover, lent itself to an evidential 
message in his characteristic manner. 

But I do not consider this sitting a really good 
one. It is interesting but not evidentially strong. 
Much of the matter is mere padding or control-talk, and 
the indications of an external mind are suggestive 
rather than coercive. 



CHAPTER VII 
Of Mediums, Sitters, and "Trivial" Evidence 

Lest it should be supposed that the obtainment of 
evidence is a quite certain and facile matter, it is 
perhaps desirable to elaborate the warning on this 
head. Investigators are sometimes found to begin 
their quest with such high expectations of immediate 
success that a few disappointments come as a pain- 
ful shock ; and there is danger that they may rush 
to other extremes and believe either that evidence 
is so elusive and exceptional that it is hardly worth 
the trouble — and may, indeed, be attributed to happy 
chance — or that we who have obtained it are somehow 
or other mistaken. The right attitude is one of open- 
minded hopefulness, with small expectancy, and 
judgment held alert and critical. Careful notes 
should be taken at the time — verbatim if possible, 
though this necessitates the easy use of shorthand 
— and particular attention should be given to 
noting down what is said by the sitter, so that 
in studying the report afterwards it will be pos- 
sible to estimate with some reliability the amount of 
information imparted or inferrible. And what the 
medium says should be reported as fully as possible ; 
firstly, in order that the correct statements may be 
compared with the incorrect in total, and a decision 
arrived at as to the likelihood of chance coincidence 
giving the proportion of success achieved ; secondly, 

198 



MEDIUMS AND EVIDENCE 199 

because things which are unrecognized and apparently 
negligible may turn out important in the light of 
further sittings, as the reader will have noticed in 
my own investigations. 

It is, of course, vitally important that a good 
medium should be chosen, particularly for the first 
experiments, when failure would be most likely to 
discourage. I have sat with mediums whose futile 
performances, if I had witnessed them at the beginning 
of my quest, would almost certainly have deterred 
me from further inquiry. I should probably have 
assumed that all other mediums were like unto 
them, dismissing the evidential cases which one reads 
about as due to chance coincidence, or fraud, or other 
normal cause. I should have been wrong, but that 
is what I should probably have done. 

Like travellers who spend a few weeks in New York 
and then write books about America and the Americans, 
we all are apt to generalize from insufficient data. 
Only the other day I had an experience with one of these 
failure-mediums. I had been recommended by a 
prominent and intelligent spiritualist to try this Mrs. 
Drury (pseudonym), and I did. In the first instance 
I wrote to her (keeping a copy of the letter), asking 
her to come and give me a sitting, because I wanted 
to hear from someone who had recently died. She 
came ; talked genially and sensibly, and eventually 
described half-a-dozen spirits or more, and would 
apparently have gone on indefinitely. Not one of the 
spirits was recognizably anyone ever known to me. 
Only one name was correctly got — a very common 
name which would fit some deceased relative of almost 
anyone. The medium felt that someone in my sur- 
roundings wept a great deal (which is extremely untrue), 



200 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

and that a glove which I gave her was therewith asso- 
ciated. The glove, she thought, had belonged to my 
mother, who had died suddenly and without expecting 
it, not many months ago. Apparently she had made 
a guess that the recent death alluded to in my letter 
was probably my mother's. As a matter of fact, my 
mother died thirty years ago, after a lingering illness 
which both she and everybody round her knew to be 
incurable. The glove had not belonged to her, but to 
a lady friend, not a relative ; and in her case also the 
death was neither sudden nor unexpected. Mrs. Drury 
made many other bad shots ; so many that it was 
a matter of surprise to me that the number of hits, 
or approximate hits, was so few; for I should have 
expected chance to give her more than she got. 

Now I believe this woman to be perfectly honest. 
But I think that she is guided, consciously or sublimin- 
ally, by hints given by sitters, and that her active 
visualizing imagination does the rest. No doubt she 
will have the luck to score a number of good hits some- 
times, particularly when giving " clairvoyant tests " 
to a large audience — for out of a hall full of people 
nearly any sort of description will apply to some de- 
ceased relative of somebody present — and an un- 
critical person will tend to remember the hits and 
forget the misses. Consequently, according to my 
belief, many " mediums " of the public kind have more 
or less of a reputation which has no basis in any real 
psychical endowment at all. They are good platform 
speakers, and combine an address with clairvoyance in 
the recognized convention of the spiritualist society; 
but the clairvoyance in their case is not real, and, 
indeed, this class of "medium" does not get beyond 
societies of rather weak and uncritical kind. They 



MEDIUMS AND EVIDENCE 201 

are therefore fairly easily avoided, though it is 
necessary to mention them in warning. 

But if care is taken in the early choice and experi- 
mentation, I think there is little danger of complete 
failure. I regard it as unlikely that anyone will fail to 
get some small measure of success in a series of, say, 
half-a-dozen sittings. I have heard of people having 
a larger number without getting any evidence, but I 
think the cases must have been exceptional, or perhaps 
the sittings were more or less public, and no determined 
individual effort was made. Private sittings, so that 
there is no mixture of influences, are usually essential 
to good results. In most cases known to me, some 
evidence of supernormality has been given at the first 
sitting, and it has only remained to eliminate by further 
experiment the various alternative hypotheses of tele- 
pathy, etc., which, though unlikely, are possible. At 
my own first sitting with a medium, many years ago, 
my mother's name was given, her age at death, and 
its date (within a year) and the name of the place 
where she died, from which locality we had removed. 
I had told the medium none of these things, and acci- 
dental knowledge of them was improbable to the point 
of complete incredibility ; further, they could not be 
attributed to chance, for everything said was true, so 
it was not a case of selecting hits and ignoring misses. 
There were no misses. Consequently, there was a clear 
issue. It was either a reading of my mind, or the 
medium had deliberately made inquiries about my 
long- deceased mother, or the communication was from 
some other mind — presumably her own. Further in- 
vestigation eliminated the first two suppositions. It 
took several years and many sittings to convince me 
of this, for I wished to make the ground thoroughly 



202 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

sure before risking any advance ; but my accumu- 
lated facts ultimately gave me an amply solid basis 
for the new conclusion of the genuine agency of dis- 
carnate human intelligences. 

Now as to the alleged " triviality " of communica- 
tions. Some inquirers at the beginning of their quest, 
or, rather, at the beginning of their reading of the 
literature of the subject, object to the triviality and 
the so-to-speak secular tone of tne reported messages. 
They think that a glorified human being should ser- 
monize a little, or should at least tell us something of 
his present state ; and they are rather shocked to 
find that he sends his love to this or that relative, 
and is glad that his watch is being kept for little 
nephew Tom. But, on reflection, this is surely seen to 
be the right and natural thing. As already said, death 
is a catastrophe on the physical plane, but is only an 
incident to the spirit. The man remains essentially 
the same. As the old woman said to Little Nell, in 
The Old Curiosity Shop, " death doesn't change us 
more than life " — no, nor as much. The other opinion 
is the result of obsolete theologies which, though dis- 
carded, leave a more or less subconscious but never- 
theless very real impression behind them ; in conse- 
quence of which impression we feel a jar or jolt when 
some radically different idea is presented to us. The 
Protestant orthodoxy of the last three centuries sup- 
posed a sudden change at death. Man became angel 
or devil ; went to everlasting bliss — presumably be- 
coming perfectly good — or to everlasting torment — 
presumably becoming absolutely bad — instanter. 

But this is not the way things do happen. Nothing 
is really catastrophically sudden like that. Things 
grow out of what has gone before. Lyell showed this 



MEDIUMS AND EVIDENCE 203 

in geology — how, for instance, sandstone was formed 
by long-continued deposition on the sea floor, as it 
is being formed to-day. Darwin showed it in biology, 
proving that species become gradually differentiated, 
and that each line progresses smoothly, or at most 
with very small jumps — namely, the favourable varia- 
tions. And now comes the equivalent on the psychical 
side. We see now that physical analogies point to 
the probability of a gradual and not a catastrophical 
and tremendous change at death. A change there must 
be, in manner of perception, for the spirit has dropped 
his old sense-apparatus. But the man himself, his 
spiritual and mental essence, remains very much the 
same five minutes after death — to quote the Bishop 
of London — as he was five minutes before. That is 
what we arrive at by a wide survey of physical science 
and by arguing analogically therefrom. And the facts 
of psychical research support this view. The spirit 
remains himself, with his old interests. He progresses, 
learns, improves, and gradually passes away from earth 
conditions ; but for some time — the period varying in 
different cases — he remains something like what he 
was. And, therefore, it is natural for him to com- 
municate in a quite human and secular manner when 
he " returns " not long after his departure, and to 
send the same sort of messages to his loved ones left 
behind, as he would send to them if he had only emi- 
grated to another part of the physical world. More- 
over, it is precisely this kind of message, with names 
of relatives and intimate family detail, that gives the 
best evidence of identity. Those who demand ser- 
monizing and lofty communications would speedily be 
dissatisfied if they got them. " How do we know," 
they would say, " that this is a spirit at all ? How 



2o 4 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

do we know the medium isn't doing it himself ? Any- 
one with inventive faculty could talk this sort of thing." 
And they would be quite right. That sort of thing 
would be eminently unconvincing and unsatisfactory. 
As a matter of fact, a great deal of this unverifiable 
but " higher " information does come through ; and, 
after identity has been established, it is admissible 
and interesting. Spiritualistic literature abounds in 
volumes of automatic writing which describes condi- 
tions on the other side and inculcates moral and re- 
ligious teaching. Stead's After Death, Stainton Moses' 
Spirit Teachings, F. Heslop's Speaking Across the 
Borderline, and Mr. L. V. H. Witley's books may be 
mentioned as examples. No doubt in each case the 
recipient became satisfied of the sender's identity, by 
evidential tests, and then published the other writings 
— which mostly fail to impress us, for we do not know 
the details of the identity tests, and we cannot verify 
the statements about other-side conditions. But the 
fact remains that the statements are there in plenty ; 
so the objection about communications always being 
trivial, besides being misplaced — small personal details 
being very useful as identity evidence — is, indeed, not 
even true- 



CHAPTER VIII 

False Statements and their Explanation : and 
Remarks on Wilkinson's " Forms " 

If all survival-evidence were as clear and consistent 
as that which I have obtained in my own investigations, 
the thing would seem to my mind not only settled 
but also quite simple. In my evidence the facts all 
point one way ; they are interpretable on the spirit- 
theory, and they contain no incident that is incon- 
sistent therewith, while they do contain many incidents 
which in my opinion are inconsistent with any other 
reasonable hypothesis. Judging from my own first- 
hand experience, I should have no doubt or difficulties. 
But in studying other evidence it is different. 
While finding much that supports my own view, I find 
much to puzzle me. Apparently my friend Mr. Wilkin- 
son is an extraordinarily good medium, for he is hardly 
ever wrong. He may not get much at some sittings, 
if he is in poor form or conditions are unfavourable, 
but what he gets is usually correct. 1 With most other 
mediums there is a good deal of padding, also a 
certain amount of " fishing,'* and sometimes false 
statements of an out-and-out character inconsistent 
with at least part of the spiritistic claim. 

1 He does not give private sittings in a general way, being nervous 
about not getting results. He is kind enough to sit for me, practically 
without remuneration, because he knows that I understand. I am 
greatly indebted to him for the unselfish help without which I should 
never have reached my present conclusions. 

205 



206 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

For example, the Conner series of incidents in the 
case of Mrs. Piper. 1 Now I believe, with Mrs. Sidg- 
wick and other cautious and sceptical investigators, 
that supernormally-acquired knowledge was often dis- 
played in Mrs. Piper's speech or script, and that it is 
difficult to explain all of this without supposing in 
some cases the agency of dead people. The case of 
George Pelham, described in Vol. xiii. of Proceedings 
S.P.R., is particularly impressive ; indeed, granting 
the honesty of Dr. Richard Hodgson who superintended 
the investigation and wrote the report — an honesty 
which no one has ever impugned, — the evidence in this 
case is almost coercive. 

But what about the other aspect ? A young 
American named Dean Bridgman Conner went to 
Mexico City in 1894, was employed as electrician at 
a theatre, became ill with typhoid fever, and in March, 
1895, was reported by the Consul to have died at the 
American Hospital and to have been buried in the 
American cemetery. Some months afterwards, how- 
ever, the young man's father had a dream in which 
his son appeared and informed him that he was alive 
and in captivity, being held to ransom in Mexico. 
Mrs. Piper was consulted by friends of the Conners, 
trance sittings were held, and the controls — by aid 
of rapport- objects belonging to D. B. Conner — pur- 
ported to trace his movements and whereabouts. They 
confirmed the father's dream, and stated that the 
missing man was in or near Puebla, in a building which 
they described, guarded by a man whom they described 
and named. Several investigators went to Mexico, 
one after the other, and it was finally established by 
Mr. Philpott, who found the nurse who was with 

1 The Quest for Dean Bridgman Conner, by Anthony J. Philpott. 



FALSE STATEMENTS 207 

Conner when he died, that the Consul's report was per- 
fectly true, and that the dream and the trance " in- 
formation " were, so far as Conner was concerned, 
entirely wrong. 

Now it is not particularly surprising that ostensible 
spirit communicators should make mistakes, for we 
do not suppose them to have become omniscient by 
the mere dropping of their physical bodies. They know 
more than we do, but they do not know everything. 
When we ask them questions we must not expect in- 
fallibility in the answers. But this does not dispose 
altogether of the Conner case. 

In the first place, it is queer that such definite and 
persistent statements should be made, if the controls 
knew that they were imaginary and false ; for the said 
controls might have known that investigations would 
be started and the deception discovered. It seems 
more probable — bizarre though the idea is — that the 
controls, whatever they are, cannot always distinguish 
between objective truth and their own imaginations. 
And, after all, the idea is perhaps not so bizarre as it 
seems at first. When we dream, we have no test of 
objective truth ; all seems real to us. If we described, 
while still asleep, all that we are experiencing in a 
dream, a waking listener would find many references 
to existing people and things, and correct statements 
of various sorts, mixed with much falsity and non- 
sense. Now it seems certain that whatever these con- 
trols are, there is something sleep-like in their condi- 
tion : the medium is in a sleep -like trance, and this, 
plus the more specific internal evidence of what is 
said, suggests that the control is more or less in a sleep- 
like state, and, indeed, is inevitably so. In some such 
way as this we can account for the curious mixture 



208 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

of sense and nonsense, knowledge and ignorance, that 
is shown in these trance phenomena. The control, we 
say, being in a sleep-like condition, is not always able 
to distinguish between what is true (true on our waking 
plane) and what is due to the dreaming activity of 
his own or the medium's mind. The Conner case, 
therefore, with all its mistakes, does not invalidate 
the true things that constitute good evidence for sur- 
vival in other parts of Mrs. Piper's experience. 

Another point, however, must be mentioned. In 
Mrs. Piper's trances a large number of controls pur- 
ported to appear at different times. Of these George 
Pelham gave by far the best evidence of his identity. 
Some others gave fair evidence, and some none at all. 
And some few of the persons mentioned were obviously 
dream-creations. For example, an Adam Bede was 
alluded to as a real individual on the other side, 
as well as a George Eliot ! Also Julius Caesar, who, 
though possible, seems hardly probable. And the 
troublesome thing is that George Pelham vouches for 
the reality of the others. If we admit that George 
Pelham has proved his identity, how can we reject 
Julius Caesar whom he introduces ? And what about 
Adam Bede ? 

This is the question that occupied Mrs. Sidgwick 
in her laborious inquiry in Vol. xxviii., Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research. Her final opinion is 
that the controls stand or fall together, and that George 
Pelham is a subliminal fraction of Mrs. Piper, like all 
the others. At the same time Mrs. Sidgwick affirms 
without hesitation that supernormally-acquired know- 
ledge was displayed in Mrs. Piper's trances, and that 
some of it justifies the hypothesis of communication 
from the dead. She therefore distinguishes carefully 



FALSE STATEMENTS 209 

between the control — the subliminal fraction which is 
the intelligence proximately operative — and the com- 
municator, who may be a person in the spiritual world, 
a person who can somehow send his message through 
the control. In cases like Pelham's, a real G. P. 
was there in the background, and was exceptionally 
successful in getting his messages through. In the 
Conner case, there was no spirit communicator there 
at all ; the subliminal fractions of Mrs. Piper's dream- 
self were having it all their own way. 

Something like this is probably true. I believe that 
many trance controls, not only some of Mrs. Piper's, 
may be dream-creations of this sort. But I do 
not feel able to say that all controls are such. In 
specially good evidential cases, as sometimes with 
G. P., the identity- evidence flows so freely, and the 
give-and-take with the sitter is so quick, that it is 
difficult to visualize the process as telepathy through 
a personation. It seems much more like direct con- 
trol by the communicator himself. Perhaps we can 
accept this and at the same time get over the Julius 
Caesar and Adam Bede difficulty by supposing these 
latter personations to be dreams of the real G. P. con- 
trol, rather than of Mrs. Piper's subliminal. But on 
this question of the real nature of controls I feel that 
we do not yet know enough to dogmatize ; perhaps 
not even enough to begin distinguishing — except for 
convenience of description — between control and com- 
municator. It is a matter of detail, and is interesting 
and no doubt psychologically important, but it does 
not affect the main fact that survival-evidence comes. 

From the psychical research point of view it does 
not much matter whether it comes from the com- 
municator at first hand or whether it comes from him 
o 



210 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

via a mouthpiece or channel which calls itself and 
perhaps believes itself to be a spirit. The main thing 
is that the evidence comes. The psychological process 
can be analysed and determined in due course. But I 
mention the problem in order that the difficulties may 
be seen. I have no wish to make the case out to be 
better than it is. There are puzzling problems still 
to be solved, particularly in regard to trance medium- 
ship. But while in fairness insisting on the recognition 
of these difficulties, I must also in fairness repeat and 
emphasize the fact that in my experience these diffi- 
culties have hardly occurred at all. For in my sittings 
with trance-mediums I have never had any such 
mystifications as the Conner case, and in my sittings 
with Mr. Wilkinson, which have given me my best 
evidence, there was not the complication of the trance. 

It may, however, be suitable here to discuss briefly 
the nature of the " forms " which this medium sees. 
He is not in trance — is, indeed, in a normal or at most 
slightly " absent " state ; yet there is something 
unusual and abnormal in the phenomena, for the 
figures are invisible to ordinary sight. What, then, 
are they ? 

I do not know. I feel that I can offer only the 
most provisional guesses ; but these, for what they 
are worth, I will state. 

The forms, plus the clairaudience, convey informa- 
tion, as I believe, from certain disembodied people. 
But I do not think that what Wilkinson sees and hears 
is an affair of matter in any ordinary sense of the 
word. When he " hears " a name, I do not think he 
hears it with his ears, as a result of air-waves. If he 
did, I think I should hear it, too, however low a 
whisper it might be, for I have exceptionally acute 



MR, WILKINSON'S "FORMS" 211 

hearing. I have reason to believe, from various indi- 
cations, that in ordinary physical auditory sensitiveness 
the medium's nerves are no more delicate than my 
own. The clairaudience is psychical ; an " inner " 
hearing. 

Similarly with the seeing. Wilkinson almost cer- 
tainly does not see the forms with his physical eyes, 
for he often describes details which he could not see 
on an ordinary incarnate person at the apparent dis- 
tance. The perception is psychic, inner, and is trans- 
lated only by habit into the visual form. Such experi- 
ence, in varying forms and degrees, is not confined to 
professional mediums. In fact, it is fairly common. 
For instance, Mr. Edward Carpenter tells of something 
of the sort in connexion with his mother. " For 
months, even years, after her death, I seemed to feel 
her, even see her, close to me, always figuring as a 
semi-luminous presence, very real, but faint in outline, 
larger than mortal." 1 And, of course, apparitions, 
even of evidential order, are fairly numerous, as the 
Society for Psychical Research has shown by its labori- 
ous census. The difference is that while Mr. Carpenter 
saw only his mother, and other percipients similarly 
saw people with whom they had some link of affection, 
Mr. Wilkinson's perceptivity is so much more delicate 
and keen that he sees people unknown to him, and 
even people unknown to the sitter. By making his 
mind quiet, hushing his senses, orientating himself the 
other way, so to speak, he perceives in the other world ; 
and perceives very truly, though only in gleams or 
flashes. 

It has often been remarked, with regard to appari- 
tions, that the ghost behaves in an aimless sort of way, 
1 My Days and Creams, p. 106. 



2i2 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

standing about or moving without apparent purpose ; 
and this has been tentatively explained by the sup- 
position that the ghost is not " all there " — that it is, 
perhaps, a partial manifestation of the person it re- 
presents, his main portion being elsewhere, as our 
main mental portion is elsewhere or in abeyance when 
we are asleep. In fact, apparitions have been called 
" the dreams of the dead," and there is almost cer- 
tainly some sort of truth in it. In a case known to 
me, a girl was frightened into brain fever by violent 
rappings lasting nearly all night, and it turned out that 
her brother had been killed, a few minutes before the 
rappings began. (It was before the war, and the 
young man was not in any specially dangerous employ- 
ment, so there was no anxiety or expectation.) If we 
attribute the knockings to the activity of the brother's 
spirit, it seems clear that his full consciousness was 
not there, for he would not have wished to terrify 
his sister thus. The probable explanation is that he 
did not know what effects he was producing in the 
material world. His mind would naturally turn to his 
favourite sister, and he would try to speak to her or 
to attract her attention ; but, finding himself sud- 
denly in a new state, and being upset and bewildered, 
he did not fully know what he was doing. 

The people whose forms Mr. Wilkinson sees have 
mostly been gone some time and have become accus- 
tomed to their new state. The forms consequently 
do not behave in any erratic or distressing manner, 
but they do give an impression of being only a partial 
manifestation of the spirit's full consciousness. Some- 
times they are described as motionless images, remain- 
ing for perhaps a quarter of an hour and then fading 
gradually away ; as if the spirit had manufactured a 



MR. WILKINSON'S "FORMS" 213 

form out of something half-way between spirit and 
matter, for purposes of identification. There is a curi- 
ous resemblance between the general conception which 
these particular phenomena suggest to me, and the 
conceptions of the early Greeks and Romans, who 
described the heroes in the Place of Shades as having 
a rather dull and aimless time of it ; but the real 
hero — the man himself — is in bliss elsewhere. It would 
almost seem that the philosophers and poets had had 
visions somewhat like modern apparitions and like 
Mr. Wilkinson's forms, which led them to this idea of 
dim and half-conscious shadows — the " astral " shapes 
of the Theosophists. 1 But we must not digress further. 
My point is that the forms are not the spirits themselves, 
but are partial manifestations or representations. They 
have the real spirit behind them, as the marionette has 
its operating but invisible intelligence in the man who 
pulls the strings ; but they cannot convey all that is 
desired, because of the limitations of the situation. The 
discarnate mind is in a clearer and much freer and 
happier state ; and to convey ideas to the medium 
necessitates a coming down, an approach to our clogged 
material condition, and a building up of forms out 
of something which is sufficiently near being matter 
for the still enmattered medium's perception to see. 

A word or two as to the naturalness of psychical 
phenomena. A friend of mine, who had never sat with 
a medium, said to me with evident surprise, after read- 
ing a manuscript account of one of my sittings, that 
the medium seemed " quite a homely sort." I do not 

1 Plotinus speaks of the shade of Herakles being in Hades while 
the true Herakles is with the gods, and Ovid says that the flesh 
is buried, the shade flits round the tomb, the manes goes to the 
underworld, and the spirit " seeks the stars." 



214 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

know what he expected, but I rather think that many 
people have more or less mistaken notions on this 
head. They think of the process and the person as 
necessarily weird and alarming and nerve-shaking. 
Darkness, blue lights, sheeted ghosts, perhaps even the 
clanking chains of the orthodox Christmas story, fill 
their imagination. Hamlet's father occurs to them, 
and they feel that any commerce with the other side 
ought to harrow up their souls, freeze their young 
blood, etc. Perhaps they think of Dante also ; and 
certainly any communications from Dante's Paolo and 
Francesca — not to mention Brutus, Cassius, and Judas, 
who were in the very lowest hell — would be depressing 
enough. But if they refrain from having sittings 
because they expect something of this sort, it is a poor 
sort of testimonial to the virtues of their translated 
relatives and friends. Evidently these latter are thought 
to be having a very purgatorial time of it. 

But probably this is not quite the true reason. 
Many people avoid having sittings because the secu- 
larly of the proceedings is distasteful, and this is under- 
standable and excusable, as I have already said ; though 
it is perhaps regrettable and to be somewhat resisted, 
being due mostly to prejudice. Others, perhaps, have a 
natural shrinking from having intimate family matters 
— names of loved relatives and the like — handled by a 
stranger. But probably most people who, while quite 
inexperienced, nevertheless elect to remain so, feeling 
an unexplained aversion, are influenced by their imagin- 
ative fears. These may be vague, but they are real. 
Mediums are thought of as weird and pallid ladies — 
as I recently saw the species seriously described — and 
dramatic tales of obsessions and haunts rise dimly 
before the mind. 



MR. WILKINSON'S "FORMS" 215 

Theosophy has been a contributory cause to this 
mistaken frame of mind. Particularly in its early 
days it was perceived by its High Priestess, Madame 
Blavatsky, that sittings with mediums must be dis- 
couraged, lest the authority of the spirits should com- 
pete with her own. A later priestess of a different 
cult — Mrs. Eddy — similarly forbade preaching in 
her church, perceiving that heterodoxy would arise. 
Madame Blavatsky frightened her docile flock away 
from seance rooms in order that they might continue 
to sit at her own feet. That is quite understandable. 
So is the Roman Catholic opposition, for if we think 
we get firsthand information from the other side, we 
do not go to the priest for his secondhand teaching. 
Quite obviously, religions of centralized authority will 
fight spiritualism with all their might, for they are as 
antipathetic to it as despotism is to democracy. And 
their method is usually terroristic. It employs " fright- 
fulness," as despots do. Psychical research is " dan- 
gerous." Terrible things are told of; more terrible 
things still are hinted at. 

These dangers may exist. I do not know every- 
thing, and nothing but omniscience can make universal 
denials. But I have not encountered any evidence of 
their existence. I have investigated more or less for 
over ten years, and intimate friends of mine have in- 
vestigated for periods of ten to forty years. Nothing 
in their or my experience has occurred to scare them 
or me from the research. Sittings with mediums for 
phenomena of " psychological " order — i.e. not physical 
phenomena such as movement of objects without con- 
tact and materialization — are quite ordinary and 
prosaic affairs, with nothing alarming about them. 
All is quite natural. An imaginative and impulsive 



216 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

" rationalist " describes a sitting as " weird," though 
it was an amateur affair, and, so far as the narrative 
indicates, had nothing weird about it. 1 Certainly no 
one, however nervous, need fear the sort of sittings I 
myself have had. 

With Wilkinson here, a stranger coming in would 
find one man sitting in an arm-chair chatting apparently 
in a quiet, ordinary way, with occasional pauses ; and 
another man writing, in an equally quiet and ordinary 
way. The hypothetical stranger might easily mistake 
the medium for a business man dictating letters, and 
myself for a secretary taking them down in shorthand. 
Listening to the matter of the discourse, he would, of 
course, find that the speaker was describing things not 
normally visible to other folk, but the experience is so 
ordinary to him that his manner is perfectly calm. 
He tells me that he frequently sees spirit forms, which 
are quite lifelike and solid-seeming, in his own home, 
and very often they talk to him, though by impression 
or telepathy rather than by ear-heard speech. One 
day, quite unexpectedly, his deceased mother appeared, 
along with another woman who was unknown and who 
seemed rather dishevelled and unhappy. The two 
seemed so real that Wilkinson momentarily almost 
forgot that his mother was dead, and said, " Why, 
mother, whoever have you got with you ? " To which 
she replied : " Oh ! it's somebody I'm just looking 
after a bit." All quite natural and homely. 

And it is pretty much the same with trance mediums. 
There is usually nothing distressing about the transi- 
tion from waking to trance and back again, and there 
is nothing uncanny in the trance itself. In Mr. Alfred 

1 Mr. Joseph McCabe, in the Literary Guide and Rationalist Review, 
March, 1916. 



MR. WILKINSON'S "FORMS" 217 

Vout Peters this is particularly noticeable, the trance 
coming on easily and almost instantaneously, and the 
Moonstone control — said to be a Brahmin who died 
four hundred years ago — being a quite likeable per- 
sonality, on any theory. 

I once had a sitting with a London lady which struck 
me at the time as being rather amusingly dramatic, 
but even that was not uncanny. It was due to the 
fact that it became dark before the end, and I could 
not light up lest the glare should jar the medium, 
so she went on with her large magnetic passes, and the 
healer control — a supposed Syrian chief, a Druse — went 
on talking, sometimes in unintelligible sounds, purport- 
ing to be an Eastern language, to the light of a street- 
lamp which shone in through the window. But it was 
not weird. The control was jolly and friendly, and 
the medium herself was an excellent soul. 

So, judging from my own experience, there is 
nothing in the least alarming or upsetting in these forms 
of mediumship. The phenomena are unusual in the 
sense that few people manifest them ; but after our 
first introduction to them they soon fall into place 
as part of the natural phenomena of experience. 

Let it be understood, however, that I do not urge 
or even encourage anyone to seek this kind of ex- 
perience. Psychical research requires training, and, 
indeed, special aptitude. It takes time, e.g., to learn 
how to be sympathetic and friendly, while giving 
nothing away and remaining alert and critical. And 
a medium requires proper treatment, for he is an 
instrument more complex and more delicate than any 
inanimate one. The investigation is therefore not 
suited to everyone. 



CHAPTER IX 
Home Mediumship 

No investigator will deny that paid mediumship has its 
disadvantages. Apart from the question of fraud — ■ 
which, as I have said, is easily eliminated in the dis- 
cussed class of phenomena — there is a certain natural 
shrinking, particularly at first, from the idea of get- 
ting into communication with friends on the other 
side through a stranger to whom we pay a fee. More- 
over, most mediums being, as it were, habituated to 
the experiences which to others are exceptional, are 
apt to take things as a matter of course, and to speak 
of the other side with an ease which rather shocks 
those of us who had an orthodox religious upbringing. 
This is our misfortune, not our fault — or the medium's. 
Our early notions were wrong. There is no need to 
adopt an air of solemn awe or to get up a state of 
Victorian piety when communicating or trying to 
communicate with those who have gone before. They 
are human beings still, who love us and wish to be 
loved by us ; they are not stern archangels before whom 
we must act the trembling worm. Seriousness, entire 
earnestness of purpose, is, of course, strongly and 
unqualifiedly desirable ; also affection directed towards 
the friend in question. This is so, indeed, when we 
communicate with a friend still in the body. And 
when he has dropped this latter, our attitude towards 
him does not call for any essential readjustment. Con- 

218 



HOME MEDIUMSHIP 219 

sequently, we need feel no repugnance to the genial 
and, so to speak, secular manner of a medium, if such 
his or her manner happen to be. Some, of course, 
have a religious manner. No doubt it depends a good 
deal on their temperament and early education and 
training. 

And the more general objections to paid medium- 
ship, though they are natural enough, are nevertheless 
equally without reasonable grounds. In almost every 
department of life we depend on specialists for the 
supply of our needs, and practically all are paid for 
their services. Even the clergyman is paid — sometimes 
very well paid — and the medium's function is certainly 
no more sacred than his. No one who subscribes to 
church or chapel funds can have any logical objection 
to paying a medium, even if we consider mediumship 
in its most emotional aspect as putting us once more 
in close touch with some loved one ; while, on the in- 
tellectual or investigation side, the payment of a medium 
for the use of his psychical gifts is only on a par 
with paying a messenger for the use of his muscles 
in bringing a note from a living friend round the 
corner. 

But, while it is thus possible to show the irration- 
ality of such objections, it is not possible altogether 
to dispel the feelings of repugnance which many people 
have. Consequently, some alternative method is de- 
sirable. Some such method might be achieved, and 
an eminently satisfactory one, if paid mediumship 
could somehow be put on a more systematic and more 
dignified footing. At present one gets a medium's 
address, goes, with or without appointment, and may 
never go again ; the conditions are good from the 
sitter's " evidential " point of view, but the system — 



220 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

or lack of system — must be bad for the medium. What- 
ever the exact essentials of the medium's constitution 
may be, it is certain that that constitution is of an 
exceedingly sensitive kind ; and it is indeed surprising 
that such good results are obtainable at all from 
these delicately- organized people who are subjected 
to the searching scrutiny of sceptical and often hos- 
tile strangers — with the law looming in the back- 
ground, threatening prosecution of rogue and vagrant. 
The whole thing ought to be better managed than 
that. 

There ought to be some central institution — perhaps 
affiliated with the Society for Psychical Research, on 
the one hand, and with the Spiritualist Alliance and, 
perhaps, the Spiritualists' National Union, on the other ; 
an institution under the control of some qualified man of 
the Dr. Richard Hodgson type, with a representative 
committee behind him. Mediums should be tested and 
then engaged in some systematic and more or less per- 
manent way, so that their payment would be even and 
reliable, and depending on their average level of results ; 
they would thus be less anxious in each individual case, 
and would consequently do better. Sitters could be intro- 
duced without names, and a full shorthand report made 
of everything said by both medium and sitter, the latter 
annotating one copy and forwarding it to the secre- 
tary later — or, better, doing it on the spot — so that the 
amount of success could be estimated. When sitters 
are not forthcoming, the medium's time can be given 
either to experiments devised by those in control, 
introducing " artificial " sitters, or to some kind of 
meditational exercises or development, or to rest and 
recreation. 

How far this is possible I do not know, but it is 



HOME MEDIUMSHIP 221 

desirable. Perhaps the Stead Bureau might lead the 
way to some such scheme. 1 

This is one way of mitigating the paid-medium 
difficulty. The other is the development of the seeker's 
own psychic powers, or of those of someone in his 
surroundings. Here we come upon many difficulties. 
Many of us seem to be almost or quite destitute of 
any such powers, even in the most latent or rudi- 
mentary state. I myself have tried persistently for 
automatic writing, both with planchette and a free 
pencil, without the least sign of success. I have 
worked planchette freely enough with psychical friends, 
getting results which sometimes surprised our normal 
consciousnesses very much, but which were not provably 
due to anything outside our own " subliminals " ; but 
I think the power was all in my friend, and my own 
part was only that of a catalytic agent, perhaps efficient 
by removing the fear that he was " doing it himself." 
It is common enough for planchettists to feel that the 
board is moving of its own volition, pulling the hands 
with it ; and probably in such cases perseverance would 
lead to supernormal results, first of telepathic kind — 
after preludes of cryptomnesic phenomena — then per- 
haps of spiritistic ; for there seems reason to believe 
that communications from the other side come 
through the medium's subliminal mental levels, which 
adjoin the spiritual world. Automatic writing, in the 
first instance with planchette and a collaborator, is 

1 This was written before the recent founding of the College of 
Psychic Science by Mr. J. Hewat McKenzie, and I am uncertain as 
to how far my foreshadowings apply to it. In what I say about the 
S.P.R., I am expressing my own opinion only, and that in tentative 
fashion ; for I am aware that any co-operation of the S.P.R. with 
bodies representing something more than investigation would be a 
rather delicate and difficult matter. 



222 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

therefore a good way of beginning home experi- 
mentation. 

Another method is for two or more people to sit 
with their hands on a small wooden table which will 
rock or tilt under slight pressure. A large proportion 
of people seem able to get, in this way, movements 
which are not the result of conscious volition ; and 
intelligible messages may be spelt out by a tilt at the 
right letter, the alphabet being repeated and the 
indicated letter written down by the note-taker. It 
is a slow and cumbrous process, but occasionally good 
results may be obtained. So long as the messages con- 
tain nothing that is not known to those touching the 
table, there is, of course, no strong evidence that the 
operating intelligence is anything external to them. 
The interest begins when the matter given goes beyond 
that knowledge. Allowance has to be made for possible 
subliminal knowledge — things we have known, or may 
be presumed to have known, and " forgotten " — but, 
even with a liberal allowance on this head, there is 
sometimes a residuum which seems to call for the 
hypothesis of some external mind. 

Other development-methods there are, for clair- 
voyance, clairaudience, physical phenomena, etc., but 
these need not be more than mentioned here. The best 
method will depend on the idiosyncrasy of the person 
aiming at development ; on the direction in which the 
incipient phenomena seem to point. And it need 
hardly be said that development of psychic faculty 
is probably not a wise thing for everybody. Many 
people are better occupied in other ways. Good 
health is desirable ; a cool and critical judgment is 
essential. Each must decide for himself or herself. 
As a matter of fact, I think the dangers have been 



HOME MEDIUMSHIP 223 

greatly exaggerated by many writers, chiefly Theo- 
sophists or Roman Catholics, who think that com- 
municators are demons, or astral shells, or earthbound 
spirits, or what not. Mr. Myers knew about fifty 
automatic writers, and in his opinion the practice was 
harmful in three cases only ; and in these cases only 
because the writers became vain of their power, and 
did not exercise sufficient judgment. Very probably 
the three in question would have pushed any sort of 
activity, and not only psychical development, to harm- 
ful excess. People cannot be protected against them- 
selves. But the fact seems to be that there is little or 
no danger in careful development to an ordinarily well- 
balanced and healthy person. 

However, the chief reason for hesitating to advise 
on the matter in any particular case is the smallness 
of our knowledge of the seeker's personality, and, in- 
deed, the smallness of our general knowledge of a sub- 
ject which is only now for the first time being scientific- 
ally attacked. In such circumstances it is natural to 
be cautious. There is always danger in pioneer work. 
But I have never known of a case where psychical 
development has resulted in serious harm. I know 
many cases in which it has been productive of good, 
both to the person chiefly concerned and to others. 

Here it may be remarked that in automatic writing, 
as to a perhaps less extent in other forms of psychical 
activity, there is often misleading information or advice, 
particularly at the beginning. This seems generally due, 
wholly or in part, to the interfering subliminal or dream- 
self of the automatist. In one case of a lady well known 
to me, the automatic script foretold her death within 
a few months, and persisted in the assertion, causing 
a good deal of very natural perturbation. But the lady 



224 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

is still alive and well, after the sombre predictions of 
five years ago ; and she has wisely dropped automatic 
writing. In another case known to me the automatist 
— a man in business, far from ascetic, and very secular 
in his ways — after being convinced by evidential de- 
tails of the reality of the spiritual communicator, was 
advised to wind up his affairs and leave the city (Mexico) 
because an earthquake was going to destroy it on account 
of its exceeding wickedness. He obeyed, and went to 
Canada ; the earthquake did not come, but Revolution 
did — though not until a year or so after he left — and 
the advice may have been good in spite of its literal 
untruthfulness. And I am sure that this automatist 
benefited morally and spiritually from the messages 
in his script. He has dropped alcohol, tobacco, and 
other forms of indulgence, and is again a churchgoer. 
And even in the case of the just-mentioned lady 
who went through such a trying time, there may have 
been good in the experience, which undoubtedly exer- 
cised and braced her courage and general fibre. In 
many such cases I think there may be some deep good 
purpose behind the surface falsity. But I would not 
take the responsibility of advising any automatist to 
risk it. I should say : " Use your judgment ; do not 
let it be overruled by any communicator in matters 
of great moment." If an ordinary incarnate man 
introduced himself to us and was prolific of advice, 
we should rightly decline to be guided by him until 
we knew more about him. And a similar discretion 
should be exercised with regard to strangers on the 
other side — much more so with regard to subliminal 
dream-personalities. 



CHAPTER X 
Telepathy and Survival 

Confronted with prima facie evidence for survival, 
such as an apparition of a person who, though not 
known to be ill or in danger, did, as a matter of fact, 
die at or about the time of the experience, it is fashion- 
able to say that if it was not a chance coincidence it 
was probably " telepathy." And, unlike many fashion- 
able things, the suggestion is sensible. Such incidents, 
when their veridical (truth-telling) quality is not due 
to chance, are certainly due to telepathy. So are many 
mediumistic communications. I have never met an 
investigator of any experience who has not come across 
mediumistic phenomena which require some further 
explanation than the medium's normal knowledge. 
Therefore telepathy is rightly invoked. 

But what do we mean by the word ? Those who 
wish to avoid " spirits " evidently mean telepathy 
from incarnate minds — ordinary living people. This is 
what the " rationalists " mean by it. Mr. Joseph 
McCabe, departing from the orthodox unbelief of his 
German master, Professor Haeckel, and his co-" ration- 
alist," Sir E. R. Lankester, 1 makes the remarkable 
admission (no doubt perceiving that he is between 
the devil of telepathy and the deep sea of spirits, and 
preferring the former) that he considers the evidence 

1 " Modern biologists (I am glad to be able to affirm) do not accept 
the hypothesis of ' telepathy.' " — The Kingdom of Man, p. 65. 

P 2?5 



226 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

for telepathy " satisfactory." (" Literary Guide and 
Rationalist Review," March, 1916.) He means thought- 
transference by unknown means between incarnate per- 
sons. But he ought to have said so. What he does 
say leaves him open to the greatest suspicion of har- 
bouring spiritistic views, for telepathy may be thought- 
transference from the dead. It is not an alternative 
theory to spiritualism. The word is used in that sense 
only by people who use words loosely. Let us try 
to clear up this point. 

The coiner of a word has a right to define it. Huxley 
coined and defined "Agnosticism"; F. W. H. Myers coined 
and defined " Telepathy." And this is what he meant 
by it : " the communication of impressions of any 
kind from one mind to another, independently of the 
recognised channels of sense " {Human Personality \ 
vol. .i., p. xxii.). Observe, it is " from one mind to 
another " ; the definition specifies nothing about the 
condition of the minds, incarnate or discarnate. They 
may be either, or there may be one in each of the two 
conditions. Say to a spiritualist that his messages 
from soi-disant spirits are due to telepathy, and he 
may reply with equanimity : " Precisely ; telepathy 
from the so-called dead to the living." And it is now 
admitted by even so cautious an investigator as Mrs. 
Sidgwick that a supposition of this kind is required 
to explain some of the evidence. Mrs. Sidgwick 
asserts that communication from the dead is a justified 
hypothesis ; calling it " telepathy " gives it the re- 
spectability associated with the Greek-derived coinage 
of a scholar, and may therefore render the idea rather 
more acceptable to the sceptic, but it definitely con- 
cedes the main claim of the spiritualist, and we may 
as well admit it frankly. 



TELEPATHY AND SURVIVAL 227 

Having seen that the word " telepathy " does not 
mean anything that negates the spiritualistic theory, 
we may turn back to consider the idea which it is 
sometimes improperly used to convey — namely, tele- 
pathy between the " living " (incarnate) only, which 
is what is meant by Mr. McCabe. 

For my part, I think the evidence for this thought- 
transference between incarnate minds is satisfactory, 
and am glad to find myself in agreement with Mr. 
McCabe. If he quarrels with his fellow-rationalists 
about it, I shall be glad to back him up. And I think 
it was wise to work " telepathy from the living " for 
all it was worth, in considering mediumistic phenomena, 
before going on to the serious consideration of more 
unorthodox hypotheses. Moreover, it happened that 
the contemporaneous discovery of wireless telegraphy 
made it easy to believe — though, as a matter of fact, 
we know of no brain waves in the ether, or anything 
of the kind, and the analogy may be misleading, — so 
we believed without requiring any large body of evidence. 
Evidence there is, of course ; the experiments of Sir 
Oliver Lodge, Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, and others, 
had indicated that ideas of diagrams and the like could 
be communicated from mind to mind by means other 
than the known sensory channels. But we accepted 
this very easily. Then, when apparitions and medium- 
istic " communications " came along, we had our ex- 
planation of them ready. It was " telepathy." If 
any fact given by a spirit is known to any living person, 
the explanation is telepathy from that person; if I 
see an apparition of my soldier-brother, who afterwards 
turns out to have been killed a few minutes or hours 
before, it is either accidental coincidence — my "sub- 
jective hallucination " being due to natural anxiety — 



228 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

or it is telepathy from the living — i.e. in Mr. McCabe's 
sense ; his mind having turned to me on being wounded, 
sending out a pulse which either was some time in 
reaching me or, reaching me, remained a little while 
subconscious and latent. 

It may be so. But it is time to question whether it 
is so. Telepathy from the living, I suspect, has been 
overworked. It is time to be more critical. If tele- 
pathy may be either between incarnate and incarnate 
or between incarnate and discarnate, we must dif- 
ferentiate. If the materialist says there are no dis- 
carnate minds, we ask how he knows. We demand 
his proof — which is not forthcoming. We admit, how- 
ever, that the antecedent probability or improbability 
of survival falls to be considered. Therefore a word 
on this point. 

It can hardly be denied that though individual sur- 
vival of bodily death remains part of the supposed 
belief* of Christian churches, it has ceased to be part 
of the living faith of the average religious man. It is 
rarely preached about or written about. Clergymen 
shy at discussing it ; they have no vital belief in it 
themselves. I am aware that this is a risky general- 
ization, and no doubt there are exceptions. Some 
clergymen have such vital belief, intuitionally. But, 
generally speaking, the religious man for the last 
half-century has been able to do no more than stretch 
" lame hands of faith." " We have but faith, we 
cannot know." Tennyson typified his generation and 
the one following it. The great advance in natural 
science had resulted in the material world's filling all 
our field of vision. It is now receding into its proper 
perspective. We are beginning to remember that 
Spirit is the primary thing. Humanly-caused events 



TELEPATHY AND SURVIVAL 229 

take place first in the human mind before they are 
manifested on the material plane. The Forth Bridge, 
the first Dreadnought, the aeroplane, were created in 
the builders' minds before they took visible form in 
matter and could be perceived by others. And, 
analogically, events not humanly caused must have 
their source in another Mind, as Berkeley and all the 
Idealists have taught. In other words, there is a 
spiritual world behind the material one, and the 
former is the more real. The seen things are tem- 
poral ; the unseen things eternal. 

And if there is any sense in this philosophy, sur- 
vival of the human spirit is more likely than its ex- 
tinction. Mind is not caused by and dependent on 
body, but the other way round. Body is merely part 
of the mind's experience — a necessary part in the 
present plane, an engine or vehicle of its manifesta- 
tion ; but a part that can be dropped like a suit of 
old clothes when the time comes for us to go " up 
higher." 

It is not necessary for us, then, if this philosophy 
is sustainable, to cringe to the materialist, humbly 
begging his tolerant examination of our evidence. 
We have been too patient. It is time to take our 
rightful position. Survival is at least as likely as 
extinction, to put it at its very lowest ; and, if so, 
and if we have evidence claiming to support survival, 
it is for our opponents to prove that it does not, or 
confess themselves beaten. If it is " telepathy " 
(from the living), let them prove it. Let them pro- 
duce experimental telepathic results — provably tele- 
pathic and without spirit help — of the same kind as 
the evidence in the Proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research that claims to be due to the 



230 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

action of discarnate minds. It has not been done. 
Let Sir Ray Lankester and his friends do it, and we 
will accept telepathy from the living as a possible and 
reasonable explanation. But until it is done there is 
no scientific basis for the belief that telepathy between 
living minds can produce results even remotely ap- 
proaching those in question. 

Now, further, this telepathy from or between the 
living is used loosely to cover two entirely different 
things. For clearness' sake there ought to be two 
different terms, one meaning the experimental, or at 
most the inferribly-willed transmission of thought, in- 
cluding cases in which, for example, a veridical appari- 
tion is seen of a relative or friend who may reason- 
ably be presumed to have directed his mind to the 
percipient at or about the time ; the other meaning 
the thing that happens so frequently in mediumistic 
communications, when details are given which are 
unknown to the medium but which are known to the 
sitter, who, however, did not happen to be thinking 
about them, or which are known only to some distant 
person who, again, is not — so far as reasonable inference 
goes — thinking about them or " willing " their trans- 
mission. There is a great difference between the 
experimental telepathy effected by hard voluntary 
concentration, and this supposititious reading of a 
mind which is not concentrating on the subject at all. 
For example, in a sitting with Mrs. Piper, a message 
came, purporting to be from the son of a man slightly 
known to the sitter, who was Sir Oliver Lodge. The 
message was to be given to the ostensible sender's 
father, and this was judiciously done. The details, 
which referred to matters totally unknown to Sir 
Oliver, turned out true. The father neither knew 



TELEPATHY AND SURVIVAL 231 

nor was known ta Mrs. Piper, and the same was true 
of his deceased son. If this was telepathy from the 
living, it means a reading of the mind of a distant 
person whose existence was unknown to the medium, 
plus elaborate makebelieve to represent the message 
as coming from the son. If Mr. McCabe or any other 
so-called " rationalist " can believe in such " tele- 
pathy " as that, great indeed is their faith ! I confess 
that my credulity cannot stretch so far. I must 
remain sceptical. 

And even when the knowledge is possessed by 
some person present at the sitting, it is by no means 
certain that the explanation is a reading of that per- 
son's mind. In my own investigations I have par- 
ticularly noticed that the communications are not 
what I should expect on a mind-reading theory. 
They come very often from people I have not been 
thinking of for months or even years ; sometimes 
from people whose very existence I had almost for- 
gotten ; sometimes from people whom I am sure I 
had never heard of. In this last case it usually 
appears that some other spirit, known to me — name 
given — has " brought him," apparently to get round 
the telepathy theory ; and on inquiry I find that the 
person did exist and was a friend of the man who 
" brought " him. Perhaps my best case is that of Elias 
Sidney in my sitting of January 15th, 1915, with Mr. 
Wilkinson, but the reader will have noticed others — e.g. 
the crucial case on pp. 171-174. And I repeat that even 
when the facts are known to me, they do not seem to be 
associated in the same way as they are associated in my 
own mind. If the process were some sort of fishing 
among my recollections, we should expect certain groups 
to be fished out together ; we should recognize in the 



232 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

mediumistic communications a resemblance, in group- 
ing and articulation and emphasis, to the arrange- 
ment and prominence of recollections in our own 
minds. I have never found this to be the case, but 
quite the reverse. The grouping of the details, as 
well as the details themselves, suggests some mind 
other than my own, and other than the medium's. I 
do not say that mind-reading is disproved or absurd. 
It is a tenable hypothesis as a guess. But the facts, 
in my experience, are heavily against it. They tell 
much more strongly in favour of the actual presence 
of the minds which are purporting to communicate. 

Lest the sceptical reader should think I have over- 
looked a point, I must explicitly guard myself against 
being thought to hold that my evidence proves the 
activity of all the alleged spirits who ostensibly com- 
municate or who are described at my sittings with 
clairvoyants. I do not claim, for instance, that Elias 
Sidney was "here" ; his "form" might be a thought- 
form created by Mr, Leather for evidence' sake. 
Nothing was said about him beyond what Mr. Leather 
almost certainly knew, and the same is the case with 
Mr. Drayton. The phenomena indicating the pre- 
sence or activity of these men would only be evidential 
of their survival and presence in the strict sense, if 
it contained true information characteristic of them- 
selves but unknown to me, to the medium, and to all 
the other communicating spirits who knew the men in 
question. If my grandfather and grandmother are 
named and described, with identifying details, it 
does not follow that both are here ; it may suffice 
if one of them is, or indeed any spirit who knew the 
facts given ; though if we say so we are making the 
assumption that one spirit can produce a form, visible 



TELEPATHY AND SURVIVAL 233 

to a clairvoyant, of another spirit ; and assumptions 
are dangerous. There is experimental proof that a 
living person may produce an apparition of himself, 
but little or none that he can produce an apparition of 
someone else. 

I admit, therefore, that though in the strictest 
sense there is no proof of the presence of all those 
mentioned, I am disposed to accept the supposition 
as reasonable that all the minds suggested were prob- 
ably more or less concerned. It is somewhat the 
same as the wider question of whether all human 
beings survive death ; we cannot prove it, but if we 
can prove (or obtain good evidence for the hypothesis) 
that some do, most of us will be willing to admit, 
at least provisionally, that the attribute extends to 
the whole species. I am not at all sure that it does ; 
some may be melted up again, as the Button Moulder 
wanted to do with Peer Gynt ; but the hypothesis is 
at least good enough and reasonable enough as a 
temporary supposition. 

To sum up, then: (1) "Telepathy" means com- 
munication of impressions of any kind from one mind 
to another, independently of the recognized channels 
of sense, and this definition will cover and include 
communications from minds no longer in fleshly 
bodies. (2) It is rash to assume, in cases of veridical 
apparitions after the death of the supposed agent, 
that the cause was a thought sent out by the latter 
before death, this thought remaining latent for some 
time in the percipient's mind. There is little basis of 
fact for such a guess. In many cases it seems far 
more probable that the communication is the result 
of post-mortem activity — telepathy from the dead. 
(3) Philosophically, survival of human personality is as 



234 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

likely as, or more likely than, its extinction ; there 
is consequently no need to apologize for the evidence 
or to cling too timorously to materialistic or quasi- 
materialistic explanations — telepathy from the living 
and the like. (4) Telepathy, either from the living 
or the dead, is a doubtfully admissible supposition 
unless it is reasonable to infer that the communication 
is willed by some mind. In experimental cases it is 
so willed ; in many mediumistic phenomena no will- 
ing of the kind on the part of living people is known 
of or reasonably to be inferred. The willing, if any, 
then, is on the part of some discarnate mind, human 
or non-human. And in many cases I believe this to 
be a fact. As Miss Alice Johnson has said, some of 
the evidence indicates intelligence, will, initiative, on 
" the other side." 



CHAPTER XI 
Influences or Rapport-Objects 

It will have been noted that in some of iny sittings I 
have given the medium some object, such as a glove 
or small trinket, for so-called " psychometry." This 
is one of the most puzzling parts of a very puzzling 
subject, but it happens to be one on which I have not 
the slightest doubt. 

In regard to the " spirit- theory," and other theories 
in various departments of psychical research, I am 
quite ready to admit the possibility of alternative 
hypotheses ; I have my own preferences — e.g. the 
evidence for spirits seems to me satisfactory, and I 
therefore accept the spirit-theory in explanation of 
some happenings — but I recognize that the proof is 
not coercive, and that some other alternative explana- 
tion may turn out to be the right one. 

In this matter of " influences," however, I have no 
hesitation whatever. My experiences over many years 
and with many mediums have convinced me, slowly 
but in the end quite completely and unshakably, 
that some peculiarly-constituted people, by handling 
an article which has been in close contact with 
some person living or dead, and which has not been 
handled much by anyone else, can somehow tell things 
about that person's appearance or state of health or 
about things that have occurred in his life ; and that 
the correctness of these statements excludes chance- 

235 



236 PSYGHIGAL INVESTIGATIONS 

coincidence by guessing, while involuntary hints from 
the sitter — also telepathy from him — are excluded as 
rational explanation by the fact that the things said 
are sometimes not within his knowledge and are only 
verified afterwards. 

My first acquaintance with this kind of thing was 
about a dozen years ago. Many reports had reached 
me of the powers of a certain medium — Mrs, White, 
who lived a few miles away — and eventually several 
intimate friends of mine went and had sittings, quite 
separately and at various times. Their reports shook 
my previous healthy scepticism, and I asked a relative 
to go on my behalf, taking a snipping of my 
hair. The medium's medical controls described me 
very accurately, diagnosed correctly, and prescribed 
sensibly, without being told anything. Naturally, 
Mrs. White being a person living in the neighbourhood, 
I could not dismiss the possibility that she might 
possess some normal knowledge of me, though I had 
no reason to believe that she did, and indeed very 
good reason to believe that she did not. However, 
some years of experimentation put normal knowledge 
out of court, also telepathy from the sitter ; for it 
often happened that the latter, going on behalf of a 
sick relative or friend, would be told how often the 
patient had omitted to take his medicine or to what 
extent he had neglected other things which he had 
been ordered to do ; and these delinquencies, though 
unknown to the sitter, were confessed when the deputy 
arrived home and charged the culprit. 

From my knowledge of this medium alone, I was 
driven to admit the fact of supernormally-acquired 
knowledge, apparently through the agency of — or 
partly by aid of — such rapport-objects ; and I have 



INFLUENCES OR RAPPORT-OBJECTS 237 

had abundant confirmation through others. I have 
not made many experiments of this kind with Mr. 
Wilkinson, though an occasional test has been made, 
often with good results. For instance, the correct 
matter relative to Mrs, Napier in my sitting of April 
19th, 1916, seems to go beyond what might be ex- 
pected from pure chance, and it certainly went beyond 
any telepathy from my mind ; and on one occasion 
this same medium got results which excluded both 
these hypotheses, for on handling a paper-knife be- 
longing to my friend Mr. Knight — whose sittings were 
described in my book New Evidences — he correctly and 
fully named its deceased former owner, whom, so far 
as we are aware, he had never either known or heard 
of, and whose surname was not Knight ; also getting 
correct details unknown to Mr. Knight, but verified 
later, about certain relatives of the dead man. 

The question naturally arises : How does it come 
about ? What is the modus of the process ? And the 
answer is, unsatisfactorily enough, that we do not 
know. Neither does the medium know. He handles 
the object, making his mind as passive and quiet as 
possible, and ideas or names " come into his head " 
which are found to have relevance. That is all he 
can say. It is mysterious, though perhaps not much 
more so than the homing instinct of animals, as when 
a cat will find its way back over scores of miles which 
it certainly never travelled before except in a closed 
basket on a train. But though it is mysterious and en- 
tirely baffling as to its modus, the facts now available 
do at least enable us to answer provisionally one inter- 
esting query with regard to the phenomenon, namely : 
Does this psychometry count for or against survival, if 
it has any bearing thereon at all ? The answer, I now 



238 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

think, though formerly I thought otherwise, is that it 
counts for that theory. 

The thought inevitably arises, when a medieal 
medium not in trance and without any claim of spirit- 
help can supernormally diagnose a distant person's ail- 
ment from a bit of hair or a worn object, that perhaps 
the object somehow carries the information, inde- 
pendently of whether the owner is alive or dead. (Here 
I must remark that in Mrs. White's case there is full 
trance and the controls claim to be spirits ; but in 
some cases the normal state or something near it is 
retained, and there is no appearance of spirits, though 
of course there may be help of that kind behind the 
scenes.) Something of this sort has been claimed by 
old writers, such as Denton, in his Soul of Things, and 
in recent books such as Dr. Hooper's Spirit Psychometry. 
According to these, objects carry their history with 
them, or render it accessible ; in such fashion that a 
psychometrizing medium can correctly see the main 
incidents in the career, say, of a piece of rock or a fossil, 
quite apart from any human mind. I think, however, 
that the evidence for this is far from convincing. If the 
claim were established, it would certainly minimize or 
nullify all evidence for survival in which a rapport- 
object has been used ; for the object would be capable 
of giving a great deal of information about its late 
owner, quite independently of whether that owner is 
still in existence on the other side or not. But the 
claim has not been established, and, indeed, it hardly 
seems possible that it can be. A medium may quite 
honestly reel off the history of a fossil or bit of vol- 
canic rock, believing the ideas to be supernormally 
received ; but subliminal inference from the appear- 
ance of the object, plus imagination and perhaps some 



INFLUENCES OR RAPPORT-OBJECTS 239 

involuntary hints from the experimenter, seems enough 
to account for most of the evidence so far presented. 
Moreover, if no human record exists, it is impossible 
to verify what has been said ; and if it is claimed that 
it fits in with geological or palaeontological knowledge 
which is beyond the medium's range, there is still 
telepathy from the sitter to reckon with. So, on the 
whole, I incline to reject the idea of objects carrying 
readable indications of their history — other than infer- 
rible ones — independently of human minds. As to the 
kind of evidence that is obtained when a human mind 
is concerned, I once thought that medical diagnosis 
was somehow an affair of reading the object's memory, 
so to speak ; but now I think it is an affair of tele- 
pathic rapport between the medium's mind (or the 
control's) and the patient's. On this supposition we 
must include the patient's subliminal, for sometimes 
true things are said which are unknown to the patient's 
normal consciousness, but which are presumably known 
to the subliminal levels. 

Similarly, then, when a rapport-object formerly be- 
longing to a dead person is given to a medium, it 
establishes a rapport, and the medium gets in touch 
with the dead person's mind, though perhaps only 
with a small and distant creek and not its main part. 
If through will and affection on the other side the dis- 
carnate friend directs his attention to that outlying 
creek of his personality, its waters will rise, and much 
evidence of identity, or at least supernormality, will be 
forthcoming. If there is no particular interest, the 
evidence may be scanty. On a purely psychometric 
theory, the results would be different. A stranger 
taking an old glove of some dead person to a medium 
would get as much information about that person as 



240 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

if a near and dear relative had taken it. And this is 
not what we find. A discarnate human being seems 
to remain for some time more or less aware of what is 
being done by survivors with the things that interested 
him in life, and he can more or less " communicate " 
when any rapport-object is taken to a medium ; but 
he is not interested enough to communicate much un- 
less the bringer of the object is someone who has a 
place in his affection. 

This idea of rapport rather than psychometry is 
supported by a series of recent experiences of my own. 
A friend of mine died on November 3rd, 1915. For 
nearly ten years we had had a compact that the one 
who died first should communicate evidentially with the 
other if possible ; and, curiously, she always thought 
she would go first, though our ages were nearly the 
same and she had far better health than I for years 
after the compact. A week or two before her death 
she wrapped in oiled silk certain objects — gloves, a 
Prayer Book, a " Tennyson " — and I have presented 
these at different times to several sensitives, both 
professional mediums and private persons among my 
friends, who have psychical powers. The first attempt 
was made five days after death, on November 8th. 
No evidence of identity was obtained, and the owner 
of the object was said to be still mostly sleeping the 
recuperative sleep which follows death and which 
varies in duration in different cases. On the follow- 
ing day she was said to have an occasional waking 
period, and the automatic writing (it was a psychical 
friend of mine who did not know even the name of the 
spirit) succeeded in getting a gleam of evidentiality in 
a short message purporting to come from my friend 
on the other side ; but there were several quite in- 



INFLUENCES OR RAPPORT-OBJECTS 241 

correct statements, and the communicator, if it were 
really she, seemed to be still dreamy or not in full 
control. 

Two days afterwards (November 11th) one of the 
objects was presented to a medium in trance, and 
correct psychometry was obtained, with two letters 
correct for the first two letters of my friend's surname, 
and correct and appropriate references to me. (The 
medium — a London lady — does not know me ; the 
sitting was held on my behalf by a London friend 
who had not known the deceased lady and did not 
know her name.) But at this sitting also it was said 
that the control was " afraid it was too soon " to get 
much (the medium and control had been told nothing 
as to the nearness or remoteness of the death, and 
it might have been years ago, so far as the medium 
could know), and that more would be obtainable 
later. A further sitting took place with the same 
medium on November 25th, with some further suc- 
cess, but it was evident that the link of friendship was 
lacking, and the control said that my own presence 
was necessary to induce the spirit to make much effort 
to communicate. On March 2nd, 1916, I had the 
sitting with Mr. A. V. Peters reported in the foregoing 
pages, but I made the mistake of handing him a box 
which had belonged to my friend's husband, and to 
her only after his death, and the result was confusion. 
Then on April 19th, with Mr. Wilkinson, I got the 
first coherent and considerable evidence of my friend's 
identity and initiative, and I hope to get more. 

Now if psychometry were only a reading of indi- 
cations somehow imprinted on an object, would not 
the sensitives have been able to read them at first, and, 
indeed, best then, while they were fresh ? The failure 
Q 



242 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

at first, and the gradual improvement later, is cer- 
tainly an indication — if it would be too much to call 
it a proof — that communications depend on the reality 
and activity of the surviving mind with which the 
rapport-object links us up, and not primarily on the 
object itself. 

And this is borne out by much of the evidence of 
the Society for Psychical Research. Such objects or 
" influences " — so called by the Piper controls — were 
often used in the sittings with Mrs. Piper, and in many 
cases it may be argued that their use does weaken 
the survival evidence. But Mrs. Piper's phenomena 
do not stand alone. In the cross-correspondences there 
is ample evidence of something beyond even " cosmic 
memory " suppositions ; there is evidence of will and 
initiative on the other side, as Miss Johnson, one of 
the most cautious and most sceptical of investigators, 
has so well pointed out. (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xxi., 
pp. 376-7. See also Sir Oliver Lodge's Survival of Man, 
pp. 324 ff.). And one of the automatists — Mrs. Hol- 
land, who was in India and had no personal acquaint- 
ance with the other writers — was entirely without any 
rapport-object belonging to Mr, Myers or the other 
ostensible communicators. Yet the Myers control sent 
evidential messages, giving, for example, the address 
in Cambridge to which some of the script was to be 
sent. This was an address unknown to the automatist, 
but it turned out to be the correct address of Mrs. 
Verrall, a lecturer at Newnham, whom Mr. Myers had 
known very well. The script made allusions to a cer- 
tain text (" Quit you like men," etc.), and it happens 
that this text, in Greek, is over the gateway of Selwyn 
College, and that Mr. Myers had often remarked to 
Mrs. Verrall about a small linguistic error in the in- 



INFLUENCES OR RAPPORT-OBJECTS 243 

scription. Mrs. Holland, it should be mentioned, had 
never been in Cambridge. This, occurring without 
any use of rapport-objects, suggests the action of the 
surviving spirit, as do also the cross-correspondences. 

My provisional conclusion is that these objects serve 
as useful links, in some unknown or only dimly sur- 
misable way, but that they act only as helps, the actual 
mind of the person being required for anything in the 
way of extensive evidence. I would draw no hard 
and fast line, for such objects may yield a static sort 
of evidence like descriptions of appearance and of ill- 
ness, somewhat as the scene of a murder, or some old 
houses, may yield to a sensitive some vision or impres- 
sion of the locality's history through some emotional 
imprint on what Myers called the " metetherial environ- 
ment." But where initiative is plainly shown, as in 
much of the evidence, this thought- activity requires 
the supposition of an acting discarnate mind. It goes 
beyond any hypothesis of a reading of " dead memories." 



CHAPTER XII 
Psychical Phenomena in Earlier Times 

One sometimes hears the objection : " But if all this 
is true — if the dead are alive and can communicate — 
why haven't we been told before ? Why has it been 
left for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to dis- 
cover ? " But the answer is that we have been told 
before ; not once, but many times. We were told in 
the Bible, and probably in all the other Scriptures of the 
world. We were told by most of the great philosophers, 
from Plato (and before) downwards. To some extent 
the belief of prophet and philosopher was due to in- 
tuition or to general reasoning of the Platonic kind ; 
but it is almost certain that a great deal of it was 
based on special facts of the kind which psychical 
research is now examining and authenticating. These 
facts are not new things in nature ; though they would 
not, therefore, be incredible even if they were — for new 
facts do arise, both by human agency in invention and 
by non-human will in the course of inorganic or organic 
evolution. A new species is a fact. So is a new star. 
Novelty does not mean incredibility. It would be no 
argument against psychical phenomena indicating either 
survival or anything else that they had only begun 
to happen recently. But the truth seems to be that 
they are at least as old as history, and no doubt older ; 
though their character may change more or less accord- 
ing to the current thought-moulds. 

244 



EARLIER PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA 245 

Mediumistic communications were at some times 
and places supposed to come from Apollo, but they 
often contained truth, as in the famous " test case " 
of Croesus, related by Herodotus. Admittedly, such 
oracular utterances seem as likely to have been due 
to the medium's own clairvoyant faculty as to any 
agency of the dead ; and we know that the human 
subliminal is suggestible, often running the material 
which it may obtain supernormally into the mould 
of any suggested personality — as in the case of Mrs. 
Piper's Phinuit, if we accept the theory of the more 
sceptical wing of the Society for Psychical Research 
in explanation of that dubious but attractive com- 
municator. But the said clairvoyant faculty remains 
to be explained, and it points beyond a materialistic 
philosophy. Apollonius of Tyana at Ephesus sees 
clairvoyantly the assassination of Domitian at Rome, 
crying out suddenly, amid his friends, " Strike him 
down, the tyrant ! " And, in a few minutes : " The 
tyrant is killed." Materialism has no explanation of 
that. It can only refuse to believe the account. 

However, many of the ancient phenomena were 
definitely associated with the survival and continued 
activity of dead people. They were by no means 
entirely subliminal Apollo-clairvoyance or the like. 
There is evidence that in the palmy days of Rome there 
were spiritualistic societies and materialization-stances, 1 
and it seems likely that spiritualistic phenomena formed 
part of the early Greek Mysteries ; else why should 
the initiate Plato say that the knowledge attained 

1 In the last century b.g. some of " the greatest personages of 
Rome " were " subjected to police supervision on account of their 
alleged practice of summoning into visible presence the spirits of 
the dead." Myers, Classical Essays, p. 207. 



246 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

in the Mysteries is a full assurance of immortality ? 
And, apart from mediumistic phenomena, it is clear 
that in those days there was general belief — probably 
with some basis of fact — in the spontaneous psychical 
happenings now known as veridical apparitions. Ovid 
in his Metamorphoses tells how the drowned Ceyx 
" appears " to his wife Alcyone, and the story is quite 
true to the modern type * as fully dealt with in the 
" Census " of the S.P.R. (Proceedings, vol. x.). And 
in later times it is almost certain that the witch-burn- 
ings — the most horrible persecution in history, its 
victims being mainly helpless old women — were due to 
the hysterical fears of an ignorant populace which had 
here and there come across psychical phenomena which 
it could not understand, and which it therefore, as 
usual, attributed to the Devil. (The " subliminal " 
has now taken the Devil's place ; it is a useful word 
for the covering of our ignorance.) And, among these 
happenings which got on the nerves of the people and 
the priests, there were pretty sure to be phenomena 
engineered from the " other side," mixed up with a 
large amount of " suggested " matter ; for instance, 
the haunting, a little later, of John Wesley's parental 
home. 

No, the difference is, in all probability, not that 
in our times the things happen and that in earlier time 
they did not, but only that in those earlier times, before 

1 Nineteenth Century and After, May, 1916, article, " A Classical 
Death Phantom," by Sir Oliver Lodge ; and Metamorphoses, Bk. xi., 
415-748. Similarly with ^Eneas' veridical vision of Creusa (JEneid, 
Bk. ii.) and — though these were dream visions — Dido's equally veridical 
interview with Sichseus, who informed her of the mode of his death and 
the whereabouts of the treasure (JEneid, Bk. i.), and Isabella's vision 
of Lorenzo (in Boccaccio's tale), who told her of his fate and place 
of burial. 



EARLIER PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA 247 

the rise of modern science in the sixteenth century, 
the phenomena were not observed and recorded in the 
careful and elaborate way which our higher critical 
standards now require. And this was inevitable. We 
cannot expect to find ancient evidence that will come 
up to modern standards. Consequently, we can neither 
accept nor deny, in any dogmatic way, such psychical 
stories as those in Herodotus, or the miracle narratives 
of the world's sacred writings. But in so far as the 
happenings described in the old narratives conform to 
types which are recognizable in the phenomena of 
to-day, they may at least provisionally be considered 
likely enough. For example, all the miracles of the 
New Testament are credible to anyone who has done 
much psychical investigation, for he comes across more 
or less similar things ; things, at any rate, sufficiently 
similar to warrant the belief that where the modern 
phenomena fall short of the ancient, the reason is that 
in the case of these latter a higher and more powerful 
Personality was concerned. 

It is natural enough that in a pre-scientific era the 
marvellous should have run more or less to seed, the 
imaginative and dramatic faculty being unrestrained 
by the severe criticism of a later day. The Bollandist 
collection of Lives of the Saints contains about 25,000 
hagiologies, full of miracles of most extraordinary kinds ; 
yet in those days the accounts caused no astonish- 
ment. There was no organized knowledge of nature 
outside the narrow orbit of daily life — and how narrow 
that was, we with our facile means of communication 
and travel can hardly realize. Consequently, there 
was little or no conception of law or orderliness in 
nature, and therefore no criterion by which to test 
stories of unusual occurrences. Anything might hap- 



243 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

pen ; there was no apparent reason why it shouldn't. 
One saint having retired into the desert to lead a life 
of mortification, the birds daily brought him food 
sufficient for his wants ; and when a brother joined him, 
they doubled the supply. When one of them died, two 
lions came and dug his grave, uttered a howl of mourn- 
ing over his body, and knelt to beg a blessing from 
the survivor. 1 The innumerable miracles in the Little 
Flowers and Life of St. Francis, are repeated in count- 
less other lives : saints are lifted across rivers by angels ; 
they preach to the fishes, which swarm to the shore to 
listen; they are visited by the Virgin, are lifted high 
in the air and suspended there for twelve hours while 
they perceive in ecstasy the inner mystery of the Most 
Blessed Trinity. Almost every town in Europe could 
produce its relic which had effected its miraculous 
cures, or its image which had opened or shut its eyes, or 
bowed its head to a worshipper. The Virgin of the 
Pillar, at Saragossa, restored a worshipper's leg that 
had been amputated, 2 and the saints were seen fighting 
for the Christian army — like the " Angels of Mons " — 
when the latter battled with the infidel. In mediasval 
times this kind of thing was accepted without question 
and without surprise. 

About the end of the twelfth century there came 
a change. The human mind began to awake from its 
long lethargy, began to writhe and struggle against 
the dead hand of authority which held it down. The 
Crusades, as Guizot shows, had much to do with the 

x The authority for this is no less a person than St. Jerome. Cf, 
the curious but more credible story of St. Francis taming " Brother 
Wolf," of Gubbio, in Chap. 21 of the Fioretti. 

a This is regarded by Spanish theologians as specially well attested. 
There is a picture of it in the Cathedral at Saragossa (Lecky, Rise 
and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i., p. 141). 



EARLIER PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA 249 

rise of the new spirit, by causing educative contact 
with a high Saracenic civilization. Men began to 
wonder and to think. Heresy inevitably appeared and 
became rife. In 1208 Innocent III. established the 
Inquisition, but failed to strangle the infant Hercules. 
In 1209 began the massacre of the Albigenses, which 
continued more or less for about fifty years, the deaths 
being at least scores of thousands ; but the blood of 
the martyrs was the seed of further freedom and en- 
lightenment. Nature began to be studied, in however 
rudimentary a way, by Roger Bacon and his brother 
alchemists. The Reformation came, weakening eccle- 
siastical authority still further by dividing the dog- 
matic forces into two hostile camps, and thus giving 
science its chance. Galileo appeared and did his work, 
though with excusable waverings, for Paul V. and Urban 
VIII. kept successively a heavy hand on him ; he was 
imprisoned at seventy, when in failing health, and, 
some think, tortured — though this is uncertain, and 
his famous muttered reservation that the earth "does 
move" is probably mythical. Perhaps more important 
still, Francis Bacon, teaching with enthusiasm the 
method of observation and experiment. The con- 
ception of law, of rationality and regularity in nature, 
emerged ; Kepler and Newton laid down the ground 
plan of the universe, evolving the formulse which 
express the facts of molar motion. Uniformity in 
geology was shown by Lyell, while Darwin and his 
followers carried law into biological evolution. 

Then man became intoxicated with his successes. 
It had already been so with Hume, whose argument 
against miracles depends on a petitio principii, assuming 
that we know all the " laws of Nature " ; it became 
more so with Matthew Arnold, who declared, in italics, 



250 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

that "miracles do not haipyen" (Literature and Dogma.) 
Man treated his own limited experience as a criterion, 
and denied what was not represented by something 
similar therein. Especially was this the case when the 
alleged facts had any connexion with religion. Religion 
had tried to exterminate Science, and it was natural 
enough that, in revenge, Science should be hostile to any- 
thing associated with Religion. Consequently, the scien- 
tific man flatly denied miracles, not only such stories as 
the rib of Adam and the talking serpent (concerning which 
even a Church Father like Origen had made merry 
in Gnostic days, fifteen hundred years before), but also 
the healing miracles of Jesus, which to us are now quite 
credible. 

This negative dogmatism is as regrettable as the 
positive variety. It is foolish to dictate to Nature 
what shall or shall not happen. When the Quietist 
miracles at the Parisian church of St. Medardus, in the 
seventeenth century, became too extensive, the Govern- 
ment intervened ; whereupon a wag adorned the church 
door with the inscription : 

De par le Roi, defense a Dieu 

De faire miracle en ce lieu, 

and this is what some pseudo-scientists have done. 
But the attitude is not scientific. Science stands for 
a method, not for a dogma. It observes, experiments, 
and infers ; but it makes no claim to the possession of 
absolute truth. It does not dictate to God or Nature. 
A genuine science, confronted with allegations of un- 
usual facts, neither believes nor disbelieves. It in- 
vestigates. The solution of the problem is simply a 
question of evidence. Huxley in his little book on Hume, 
and J. S. Mill in his Essays on Religion, admirably 
showed up the foolishness of the " impossibility " 



EARLIER PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA 251 

attitude. Says the former, in Science and Christian 
Tradition : " Strictly speaking, I am unaware of any- 
thing that has a right to the title of an impossibility, 
except a contradiction in terms. There are impossi- 
bilities logical, but none natural. A ' round square,' 
a ' present past,' ' two parallel lines that intersect,' are 
impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the pre- 
dicates round, present, intersect, are contradictory of 
the ideas denoted by the subjects square, past, parallel. 
But walking on water, or turning water into wine, are 
plainly not impossible in this sense " (p. 197). 

In matters of alleged objective fact, it is a question 
of evidence. If things happen which do not fit into 
the current theories, it is " so much the worse for the 
facts " and their upholders, just at present, until ignor- 
ant prejudice has been battered away ; but ultimately 
it will be "so much the worse for the theory." Room 
will have been made for the facts. The hypnotic 
trance was looked on by orthodox doctors as a delusion 
of Elliotson's and Esdaile's, and it was even said that 
the Indian natives who underwent severe operations 
at the hands of the latter without showing signs of 
pain must have been shamming — must have been 
feigning the anaesthesia which Dr. Esdaile affirmed was 
real. But the ignorant a priori notion had to give 
way before the rain of further facts, and anaesthesia 
in the hypnotic trance of a good subject is now a medical 
commonplace. The system of orthodox science had 
to make room for the new facts. And it will have to 
make room for the facts which indicate survival of 
bodily death ; facts which probably have always been 
sporadically existent more or less, but which have only 
recently been attacked in a systematic scientific way 
by men eminent in other branches of natural knowledge. 



252 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

It must be admitted that in these matters as in 
many others the " educated " world has not greatly 
shone. Except for a few men like Sir William Barrett, 
Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Dr. A. 
Russel Wallace, our scientific leaders have not led. 
They have, instead, been pushed along ; and some few 
even still refuse to budge, being perhaps too busy to 
investigate, and being quite properly cautious about 
accepting the conclusions of others. It was the early 
Spiritualists who laid the foundations, found the facts, 
bore the obloquy, but forced the phenomena on the 
attention of the " leaders." Even while regarding 
many spiritualistic phenomena and theories and pro- 
cedures with a certain dubiety, we cannot refuse to the 
Spiritualists our admiration and our thanks. We 
should not have been where we are now but for them. 
They have developed and supported the mediums who 
have provided us with phenomena to study. Early 
Christianity had no scholar till Paul embraced it. It 
had zealous adherents, but little " respectability." It 
has been somewhat thus with spiritualism, which, with 
F. W. H. Myers as its scholarly apostle — it is curious, 
as I have said already, that his best-known poem 
is " St. Paul " — is now coming to its own, leavening 
the thought of the world even where its label is not 
used, and itself becoming almost respectable ! 

Lest it should be thought that the phenomena in the 
Lives of the Saints are extravagances without exception, 
it is only fair to say that a few of the things are true 
to authenticated types, and are therefore not inherently 
incredible. For instance, in the Little Flowers of St. 
Francis there is a levitation of St. Bernard that is 
paralleled in the performances of D. D. Home, and 
there are several cases of human apparitions. When 



EARLIER PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA 253 

Friar James was dying, his friend Friar John " be- 
sought him dearly that he would return to him after 
his death and speak to him of his state ; and Friar 
James promised this, if God so pleased." A certain 
day was fixed for the fulfilment of the compact, and, 
according to our modern notions of " suggestion," 
Friar John ought to have had a hallucination of his 
friend on that day, for he was expecting it. Certainly, 
if he had, we should have ruled it out as non-evidential, 
because of his expectancy. But, as it happened, he 
saw no apparition of his friend on that day, though 
he saw Christ, with angels and certain saints. On the 
day following, however, Friar James appeared, and 
Friar John asked : " Wherefore hast thou not re- 
turned to me the day that thou didst promise ? " Friar 
John replied : " Because I had need of some purga- 
tion. . . . " 1 And there are a few other cases which 
at least suggest some sort of genuine basis, though 
the accounts that have come down to us are so crude 
and sketchy, and so tinctured with the particular re- 
ligious prepossessions of the narrator, that we cannot 
accept them as very weighty evidence. 

But the sum of the whole thing is that throughout 
history there have been reports of the occurrence of 
psychical phenomena of various kinds. Before the rise 
of scientific method, these happenings were, naturally, 
not well investigated or attested, and in the material- 
istic eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were 
mostly disbelieved. But careful investigation is now 
showing that more or less similar things still occur, 
and that they have an important bearing on many vital 
problems of science, philosophy, and religion. 
1 Little Flowers of St. Francis, p. 94, Dent's " Everyman " edition. 



CHAPTER XIII 
Pre-Existence and the Nature of the After- Life 

If, then, the soul lives on after death, being thus 
proved independent of the body of this flesh, may it 
not have existed before birth ? There seems no reason 
why it should not ; indeed, the supposition is almost 
inevitable, and has been accepted by many great 
minds, both before and since Plato. There is, it may 
be admitted, nothing inherently absurd in the idea of 
creation of each individual soul at birth or shortly 
before — the exact moment is a difficulty — for if we talk 
about a beginning at all, of anything, we must admit 
creation somewhere ; but the idea is less in accord 
with the body of our scientific knowledge than a more 
" graduated " concept. 

It seems more reasonable to suppose that the soul 
of man has grown up gradually, from lowly beginnings, 
as his body has grown from the unorganized speck of 
protoplasm. Not that either process excludes Divine 
help, guidance, control ; quite the opposite, for these 
are required at every step ; a biological " sport," 
breeding true, is as much a creation as it would be if 
man had appeared without his ape-like ancestors or 
cousins. 1 It is all a matter of size of step or jump ; 
the principle is the same. Purposive activity must be 
admitted in one case as in the other. " Selection " by 

1 Cf. the works of Mendel and De Vries, and an excellent booklet 
by Sir James Crichton Browne, A New Theory of Evolution, 

2 54 



PRE-EXISTENGE AND AFTER-LIFE 255 

" nature " accounts for the extinction of creatures 
having certain qualities, and for the continuation of 
those having others ; but the qualities themselves come 
into existence by creation, or, if you like, are introduced 
from the spiritual world into the material one. 

So it is not logical to exclude creation and Divine 
action just because changes are small and multitud- 
inous instead of few and great. The whole trend of 
science since its birth three hundred years ago has been 
to show that the former way is the way God works ; 
not the big-jump way, as was formerly thought. And, 
all the analogies of material science pointing to gradu- 
ated soul-growth, we see it as the reasonable thing, as 
we now see the reasonableness and greatness of our 
body-growth. Sudden creations of very complex things 
are at the least improbable. God works in stages. 
" Slow grows the splendid pattern that He weaves." 

If, then, we lived before birth, it is natural to wonder 
how and where. It is an ancient problem ; ancient 
even two thousand five hundred years ago. And in 
those days, when spirit was thought of as almost or quite 
a material thing, though vaporous {irvev/xa, breath), it 
was inevitable that the former life should be conceived 
as a material sort of existence, and partly, indeed, a 
this-earth one ; and the same after death — a recurrent 
cycle. " There comes into my mind," says Socrates, 
" an ancient doctrine which affirms that they go from 
hence into the other world, and returning hither, are 
born again from the dead." And in the famous myth 
of Er (Republic, Bk. x.), Plato, though saying that some 
of the incarnating souls foolishly choose exalted lots 
because they came from heaven and " had never felt 
the discipline of trouble," certainly teaches a return 
to earth for the departed human soul, after its sojourn 



256 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

in heaven if its previous life was good, or after its 
purification in nether regions if in that previous life 
it had been evil. Virgil seems to have accepted some- 
thing of the same sort (Mneid, Bk. vi.), and a similar 
theory is held by the modern Theosophists, who base 
mainly on Indian philosophy. 

Some conception of this kind, elaborated to fit the 
new conception of human personality with its enlarged 
" subliminal " areas and powers, and purified of early 
crudeness and materiality, seems likely to become a 
prominent feature in the religious belief of the coming 
time. Man is proved by many psychical phenomena 
— e.g. the facts showing heightened faculty in hypnotic 
and allied states — to be greater than he normally 
knows. A large mental part of him remains subliminal 
— " below the threshold " of consciousness. He is an 
iceberg which floats with only one-twelfth of its mass 
above water. 

This idea helps us to reconcile one fact which is 
an obvious difficulty in a pre-existence theory, namely, 
the fact that we have no recollection of any existence 
before our present one. Our total self being much 
greater than its present manifestation, we are able to 
suppose that other fractions of us have lived in a 
material body before, their experiences being hived 
n the memory of the complete self, while the present 
fraction is a new thing — with, therefore, no memory — 
as a cloud is new, though formed out of a pre-existing 
huger mass of vapour, into which it returns, directly 
or indirectly. 

To use yet another figure — and only through anal- 
ogies can we present the thing to our mental vision, — 
the total individual mind is a balloon, high up in the 
heaven and the sunshine, with a wide view and some 



PRE-EXISTENGE AND AFTER-LIFE 257 

unknown great purpose. From time to time it has a 
rope or ropes out, with a dredging-net trailing on the 
ground as one dredges for sea-bottom specimens. The 
point of contact with earth is an individual earth-life. 
It moves on, ever gathering experiences, with con- 
tinual painful jerks and jolts and bruisings. Then, when 
it ceases or nearly ceases to be a gatherer, it is drawn 
up and its contents made useful ; another new one 
is thrown out, to gather experience in its turn. Thus 
there is indeed a succession of representatives of the 
same transcendental ego, but — here we differ from the 
cruder form of reincarnation theory — no reappearance 
of exactly the same fraction. 

As to the destiny of the whole self, that question is 
beyond us at present. It is best to leave it alone and 
to study " things of a size with our capacity," as 
Thomas a Kempis has it. And, in speculating even 
as far as we have just adventured, we must remember 
to " sit loose to theories." We are feeling out into 
the unknown, guided by facts indeed, but going beyond 
them and guessing at others. We must recognize that 
we are speculating, and must remind ourselves that we 
are not laying down a dogma, an absolute and un- 
changeable truth, but only saying that at present, on 
the basis of such knowledge as we have, this or some- 
thing like this seems on the whole to ourselves the 
most reasonable supposition, though others may quite 
justifiably think otherwise, their knowledge- data being 
different and perhaps wider. 

On this point, once more, Plato can hardly be 
bettered : 

" A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very 
confident, that the description which I have given of 
the soul and her mansions is exactly true. But I do 

R 



258 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, 
he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, 
that something of the kind is true. The venture is a 
glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with 
words like these, which is the reason why I lengthen 
out the tale. Wherefore, I say, let a man be of good 
cheer about his soul, who, having cast away the pleasures 
and ornaments of the body as alien to him and working 
harm rather than good, has sought after the pleasures 
of knowledge ; and has arrayed the soul, not in some 
foreign attire, but in her own proper jewels, temperance, 
and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth — in 
these adorned she is ready to go on her journey . . . 
when her hour comes." 

Admittedly it may be that the whole fabric of 
experience, including all inferences, such as that of a 
future life, is a sort of dream or illusion. Sense-per- 
ception may be a confidence trick ; one sense confirms 
another, but who is to vouch for the lot ? They are 
related, have grown up together, and naturally are in 
league. They are like Schopenhauer's sciences, each 
of which introduces another as his cousin, " but how 
do I stand to the whole company ? " The Chinese 
philosopher Chuang Tze, after dreaming that he was 
a butterfly, said, " Now, am I a man who has been 
dreaming he was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly now 
dreaming I am a man ? " There is no proof possible, 
either way. " Absolute " knowledge is unattainable. 
But, the experiences of each state being real while 
we are in that state, it seems probably futile to specu- 
latejuuch as to how real or unreal they may be when 
seen from the standpoint of another state. That kind 
of speculation leads to nothing but destruction and 
scepticism, so far as philosophy is concerned. Quite 



PRE-EXISTENGE AND AFTER-LIFE 259 

probably there is a sense in which our present life is 
indeed a dream — a very bad dream sometimes, in our 
times of suffering and sorrow — and when we wake into 
the next stage we may find it so radically different that 
our present experience does not enable us to form any 
true conception of it. 

It may be so. The Christian Scientists seem to 
think so, and to get help from the thought. But to 
most of us it will seem best to take reality largely at 
its face value ; to accept experience and the rational 
interpretation of it, and to keep our fulcrum, so to 
speak, on this side. Consequently, however true it 
may be in some absolute or incomprehensible sense 
that this present life is a dream and that we can infer 
nothing from it about Reality, it nevertheless seems 
best, on the whole, to act as if it were real and reliable ; 
to accept — here is the present point — to accept the 
inferences about a " future life " which seem to be 
required by the facts of psychical research, as we 
accept other scientific inferences when the facts seem 
to require them. 

We have climbed up a long ladder of development, 
and there is no reason to suppose we are at the top. 
Human intelligence is certainly the highest that is so 
obviously existent as to be admitted by all, but it is 
absurd to suppose it the highest in existence. We 
did not make the Universe. Something did. That 
may be called naif argument, but it is sound. Effects 
require causes. If you throw causation and reason 
overboard, you are throwing away the pilot and the 
steersman, and you may land where you should, or 
you may not. Indeed, you are also denying the exist- 
ence of the shipbuilder. Beings higher than ourselves 
there must be. Certainly a Being, and almost certainly 



a6o PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

a multitude of intermediate beings, for everything goes 
by gradation in the world we are in at present. To 
the level of some of these we may climb. Some of 
them are those we have lost awhile ; who have gone 
before. 

At each stage there is an appropriate World-view. 
But though we thus believe that there are world-views 
far transcending our present feeble conceptions, our 
wisdom is to get the best view we can with the faculties 
we have now and the facts we can now obtain, leaving 
to those other and later stages the experiences proper 
to them. To do otherwise is to make the mistake 
allegorically indicated by Balzac in his Quest of the 
Absolute — to drop the reality for the shadow. For 
though a plane is real to those on it, it can only be 
shadowily realized on another, and the reality of the 
present one is partly lost, good experience being 
thus missed. This has been the mistake of India and of 
many mystical cults. We must avoid the materialism 
which sees only one world, but we must equally avoid 
the mysticism which is so filled with the thought of 
worlds ahead that it tries to live in them before its 
time. To each day its task. Some mystics 

. . . breathe in worlds 
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil, 

and, being so loftily remote, they can hardly get the 
good of this world as they might, though indeed they 
may be here as teachers mainly, antidotes to material- 
ism. But, on the whole, the right mysticism is that 
which loves the good green earth and its living freight : 
living and acting " here " as well as " there." 

Obviously, then, the very thing that I am saying 
now, and which I believe sincerely and profoundly to 



PRE-EXISTENCE AND AFTER-LIFE 261 

be true — about gradation and progress through the 
worlds — is nevertheless not true in any " absolute " 
sense. My conclusions, and all contemporary ones, 
will be superseded by successors more true and worthy, 
as the Ptolemaic system was succeeded by the Coper- 
nican. But that need not depress us ; it certainly 
does not depress me. By the time incarnate folk 
have got ahead of where I am now, I shall no doubt 
have gone ahead considerably myself. 

In short, all I am contending for is that though 
Science brings no " absolute " knowledge, the proper 
thing to do is to accept the knowledge it does bring, 
in each plane ; to face facts, and to face ourselves, 
honestly, seeking only to learn and grow and help ; 
and to leave all else to the Master Power whom we 
may call God. 

It occurs to me, here, that some readers may be 
disappointed with the vagueness of my suggestions 
regarding the nature of the after-life, and may wish for 
something concrete and exact. I believe that we sur- 
vive death, that we are met by friends when we go over, 
and that progress continues on the other side ; and, 
for me, this is enough at present. As to the exact 
nature of the progress and of the life there — whether 
we shall live in houses, go to concerts, wear clothes, 
etc. — I simply do not know. As Plato says, " Some- 
thing of the kind may be true," and it is certainly 
desirable to link up the next stage with this as closely 
as possible. For myself, I do not yet see how a spiritual 
world can safely be regarded as only a material world 
of a finer kind ; it reminds one of " weighing the soul," 
brain secreting thought as liver secretes bile, and other 
materialistic confusions. However, I may be wrong. 
And some of these materialistic heaven conceptions are 



262 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

interesting, and perhaps helpful to many, so I venture 
to quote at some length one of the best that I have 
come across, from an old book by Dr. Hare, "which prob- 
ably is now not easily obtainable. It was published 
in New York in 1855, under the ponderous title : 
Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations 
Demonstrating the Existence of Spirits and their Com- 
munion with Mortals. Dr. Hare was M.D. and Emeritus 
Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. His messages were obtained by various in- 
genious ouija-methods, some of which seem to have 
eliminated the possibility of mediumistic fraud and 
even also of the medium's subliminally causing the 
phenomena — unless we assume a great deal of clair- 
voyance — for the letters were arranged invisibly. How- 
ever, it is difficult to feel sure about that. The quota- 
tions are from pages 119 to 124 of the work cited : — 

620. From the information conveyed by communications 
submitted in the preceding pages, as well as others, it appears 
that there are seven spheres recognized in the spirit world. 
The terrestrial abode forms the first or rudimental sphere. 

621. At the distance of about sixty miles from the ter- 
restrial surface, the spirit world commences. It consists 
of six bands or zones, designated as spheres, surrounding the 
earth, so as to have one common centre with it and with 
each other. An idea of these rings may be formed from that 
of the planet Saturn, excepting that they are comparatively 
much nearer to their planet, and that they have their broad 
surfaces parallel to the planet and at right angles to the 
ecliptic, instead of being like Saturn's rings, so arranged 
that their surfaces are parallel to the plane in which his 
ecliptic exists. 

622. Supposing the earth to be represented by a globe 
of thirteen and a half inches in diameter, the lower surface 
of the lowest of the spiritual spheres, if represented in due 
proportion to the actual distance from the earth, would be 
only one-tenth of an inch from the terrestrial surface. The 



PRE-EXISTENGE AND AFTER-LIFE 263 

bands observed over the regions in the planet Jupiter which 
correspond with our tropical regions, agree very well in 
relative position with those which are assigned to our spiritual 
spheres. They are probably the spiritual spheres of that 
planet. 

It having struck me as possible that these bands might 
be due to spiritual spheres appertaining to Jupiter, I in- 
quired of the spirits ; their reply was confirmatory. 

623. The objection naturally occurs that ours are in- 
visible to us ; yet we know that light may be polarized in 
passing through transparent masses so as to produce effects 
in one case which it does not in others when not so polarized. 
It will have to pass through the spheres of Jupiter, and return 
through them again. This light, twice subjected to the ordeal 
of passing through the spirit world, when contrasted with 
that which goes and returns without any such ordeal, may 
undergo a change of a nature to produce an effect upon the 
eye, when, in the absence of this contrast, no visual change 
should be perceptible. . . . 

630. The interval between the lower boundaries of the 
first spiritual sphere and the second is estimated at thirty 
miles as a maximum, but this interval is represented to be 
less, as the spheres between which it may exist are more 
elevated or remote from the terrestrial centre. 

631. Each sphere is divided into six " circles " or plains. 
More properly these may be described as concentric zones, 
occupying each about one-sixth of the space comprised 
within the boundaries of the sphere. There being six sub- 
divisions to each of the six spheres, in all there must be thirty- 
six gradations. 

632. These boundaries are not marked by any visible 
partition, but spirits have in this respect a peculiar sense, 
which makes them feel when they are passing the boundaries 
of one sphere in order to get to the next. 

633. This allegation of the existence of an invisible spirit 
world within the clear azure space intervening between the 
surface of this globe and the lunar orbit may startle the 
reader ; and yet this idea may have been presented by Scrip- 
ture to the same mind, without awakening scepticism. It 
was urged by a spirit friend : Is it more wonderful that you 



264 PSYGHIGAL INVESTIGATIONS 

should find our habitations invisible, than that we are 
invisible ? 

634. It is plain that between the lowest degrees of vice, 
ignorance, and folly, and the highest degrees of virtue, 
learning, and wisdom, there are many gradations. When 
we are translated to the spheres, we take a rank proportional 
to our merit, which seems to be there intuitively susceptible 
of estimation by the law above alluded to, of the grossness 
being greater as the character is more imperfect. 

Both the spirits and spheres are represented as having 
a gradation in constitutional refinement, so that the sphere 
to which a spirit belongs is intuitively manifest. Rank is 
determined by a sort of moral specific gravity, in which 
merit is inversely as weight. Another means of distinction 
is a circumambient halo by which every spirit is accom- 
panied, which passes from darkness to effulgency as the 
spirit belongs to a higher plane. Even mortals are alleged 
to be surrounded with a halo visible to spirits, although not to 
themselves. Intuitively, from the extent and nature of this 
halo, spirits perceive the sphere to which any mundane 
being belongs. The effulgence of the higher spirits is repre- 
sented as splendid. As soon as emancipated from their 
corporeal tenement, spirits enter the spheres, and are entitled 
to a station higher in direct proportion to their morality, 
wisdom, knowledge, and intellectual refinement. 

635. The first spiritual sphere, or the second in the whole 
series, is as large as all the other five above it. This is the 
hell or Hades of the spirit world, where all sensual, malevolent, 
selfish beings reside. The next sphere above this, or the third 
in the whole series, is the habitation of all well-meaning 
persons, however bigoted, fanatical, or ignorant. Here they 
are tolerably happy. 

636. In proportion as spirits improve in purity, benevo- 
lence, and wisdom they ascend. They may ascend as love- 
spirits in consequence of the two first-mentioned attributes ; 
but cannot go up on account of wisdom alone. 

A knave, however wise, cannot advance in the spheres. 
There are, in fact, two modes of ascent — love, so called, and 
love and wisdom united. Those who go up in love are called 
Zoue-spirits ; those who unite both qualifications are called 



PRE-EXISTENCE AND AFTER-LIFE 265 

wisdom-spirits. A feminine spirit, who had been remarkable 
for her disinterested devotion to her relatives and friends, 
ascended almost forthwith to the fifth sphere. My friend 
W. W. had an ascent equally rapid to the same sphere. Yet 
another spirit, who was fully as free from vice as either of 
those above alluded to, took many years to ascend in wisdom 
to the fifth sphere, not being satisfied to rise unless accom- 
panied by the attributes of wisdom, as well as love. Spirit 
B. alleged that because he was a free-thinker he went up 
more quickly than another spirit, A. A., being questioned, 
admitted that B. had gone on more speedily in consequence 
of superior liberality. 

637. Washington is in the seventh sphere. 

638. In the spheres, diversity of creed has no influence, 
excepting so far as its adoption indicates badness of heart 
and narrowness of mind, and has been of a nature to injure 
the moral and intellectual character. 

639. Degradation ensues as an inevitable consequence of 
vice, and as the means of reform, not as vindictive punish- 
ment. God is represented as all love, and is never named 
without the most zealous devotion. Spirits in any sphere 
can descend into any sphere below that to which they be- 
long, but cannot ascend above this sphere. They are sur- 
rounded by a halo, which is brighter in proportion as their 
sphere is higher. They have an intuitive power of judging of 
each other and of mortals. Attachments originating in this 
life are strengthened, while hatred passes away. The spirits 
in the upper spheres have " ineffable " happiness. The suffer- 
ings of those below are negative, rather than positive. They 
are made to feel shame at a degradation which is rendered 
intuitively evident to themselves and all other spirits. But 
all are capable of improvement, so as to have elevation and 
happiness within their reach sooner or later. The higher spirits 
are always ready to assist sinners by kind admonition (92). 

640. My brother alleges himself to hold the office of a 
teacher. By teachers, spirits fresh from this world, called 
the " rudimental sphere," are examined to determine their 
rank. 

641. Spirits are carried along with our globe by their moral 
affections and affinity, which upon them acts as gravitation 



266 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

upon material bodies. They are just where they wish them- 
selves to be, as they move in obedience to their moral impulses 
or aspirations, not having a gross, material body to carry 
along with them. 

642. Spirits of the higher spheres control more or less 
those below them in station, who are sent by them to impress 
mortals virtuously. Spirits are not allowed to interpose 
directly, so as to alter the course of events upon earth. They 
are not allowed to aid in any measure to obtain wealth. 

643. Blessed spirits are endowed with a power competent 
to the gratification of every rational want. They enjoy, as 
I am authorised to say by the convocation of spirits to whom 
allusion has been made, a power like that ascribed to the 
genius of Aladdin's lamp (593). 

644. There is nothing of the nature of marketable pro- 
perty in the spirit world, since every inhabitant above the 
second sphere, or Hades, has as much as he wants, and needs 
no more to purchase the requisites for his enjoyment or 
subsistence than we need to buy air to breathe. 

645. It ought also to be explained that after spirits reach 
the highest plane or circle of the seventh sphere, they are 
represented as being entitled to enter the supernal heaven, 
taking place among the ministering angels of the Deity. 

646. Whether the connubial tie endures or not, is optional. 
Hence those who have not found their matrimonial con- 
nection a source of happiness in this world are at liberty to 
seek a new hymeneal union in the spirit world. Where there 
have been a plurality of husbands or wives, those unite who 
find themselves happy in doing so. But, as if to indemnify 
mortals for the crosses in marriage or in love, or for the 
dreariness of mundane celibacy, all are destined in the spheres 
to find a counterpart with whom they may be happy, there 
being peculiarly ardent pleasurable emotions attached to the 
connubial union in the spheres which mortals cannot under- 
stand. 

647. Infants grow as they would have done upon earth, 
nearly. They are nursed and educated, and on account of 
their higher purity have, in this point of view, as much 
elevation as their relatives who attain great worldly pre- 
eminence. 



PRE-EXISTENCE AND AFTER-LIFE 267 

648. The alleged motive for our existence in this rudi- 
mental sphere, is the necessity of contrast to enable us to 
appreciate the immunity from suffering of the higher spheres. 
Infants in this respect are at a disadvantage ; but being 
unable to appreciate their deficiency, do not grieve therefor. 
" Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." . . . 

650. Among the most wonderful facts narrated by my 
spirit father, and sanctioned by the convocation of spirits, 
is the existence of a spiritual sun concentric with ours, and 
yet emitting independent rays to the spirit world, not for 
our world ; while the rays of our sun do not reach the world 
above mentioned. 

651. Further, the facts that spirits respire a vital fluid 
inscrutable to our chemists, although it coexists everywhere 
with oxygen, and furnishes our spirits, while encased in the 
flesh, with an appropriate spiritual nourishment. 

652. Thus is there another world existing concentrically 
and in some degree associated with ours, which is of infinitely 
greater importance to our enduring existence than that 
wherein we now abide. 

I have not been able to trace the history of this 
sphere-idea with any exactness, but it seems probable 
that it is a revival of the Ptolemaic planetary spheres, 
which, indeed, go back more or less to Pythagoras. 1 
These seven heavens are referred to in the Koran, 
Mohammed having apparently got the idea from the 
Kabbalists ; and the reader will remember the same 
kind of thing in Dante. Perhaps the influence of 
Swedenborg revivified these notions, hence their ap- 
pearance in Andrew Jackson Davis's Great Harmonia 
(vol. ii.$ pages 251, 252), published in 1851. But I 
have quoted Hare instead of Davis because he is fuller 

1 Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn — the then 
known " planets " — were supposed to be fixed in crystalline spheres at 
increasing distances from the earth. Then came the heaven of the 
firmament or primum mobile. — See Sir Oliver Lodge's Pioneers of 
Science, p. 18 //. 



268 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

and more definite. It is quite possible that these con- 
ceptions may contain some truth, even though their 
astronomical basis is exploded ; but I cannot accept 
them literally, and I do not see how they can be either 
proved or disproved. They are interesting specula- 
tively, but the evidence for their truth is not of the 
same cogency as that which proves the main fact 
of survival. 



CHAPTER XIV 
Psychical Research and Religion 

Psychical research is a branch of science. It observes, 
records, and cautiously infers. An intelligent journal- 
ist said to me recently, on my mentioning something 
connected with it, that he feared he " had not enough 
poetic imagination to be interested in psychical re- 
search." He has a considerable knowledge of a few 
sciences, and he evidently looks down on us poor 
poetic dreamers. Or, rather, he feels himself to be 
planted on the good solid earth of fact, while he thinks 
of us as soaring into the blue. But, in thus thinking, 
it is he who is deceiving himself by too active poetic 
imagination. We keep as close to fact as he does ; 
indeed, closer. The difference is that he is inexperi- 
enced ; there are some facts which he has not yet 
become personally acquainted with. Schopenhauer 
said, a century ago, that " the person who does not 
believe in the fact of clairvoyance is not entitled to be 
called a sceptic ; he is merely ignorant." It is true 
enough, though characteristically blunt. The fact of 
the existence of human faculty that is not yet recognized 
by " orthodox " science is now established to the satis- 
faction of all who have made patient and unprejudiced 
investigation ; or, to be more carefully precise, I have 
never known anyone, or even heard of anyone, who 
has given time and labour and an open mind to the 
subject without being convinced ; not necessarily 

269 



270 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

convinced of personal survival, but convinced of super- 
normal faculty of some sort. But time and labour and 
an open mind are necessary. The thing is a science, 
and, like all branches of science, must be worked at. 

And, being a department of science, it would seem 
that it has nothing specially to do with religion. The 
psychical researcher might stick to his last, declining 
to be tempted into other departments, leaving it to 
the philosophers and the religious world to decide what 
significance his facts and theories have for their own 
special subjects. And this is what some psychical 
researchers do, particularly those who are chiefly 
concerned with the medical side — hypnotism and 
mental therapeutics generally. But all sciences have 
religious or philosophic implications, near or remote ; 
for our knowledge of the material universe affects our 
metaphysical ideas. Copernicus and Galileo were 
astronomers, but they influenced theology also. The 
greater universe- conceptions which they brought about 
needed a correspondingly greater God. Metaphysics 
has to keep pace with physics. And though the mental- 
therapeutic side of psychical research — somewhat like 
chemistry — has little direct bearing on religion, the 
other departments dealing with telepathy and survival 
have — like astronomy, but more so — a rather vital or 
at least intimate relation thereto. 

We are, therefore, almost inevitably carried forward 
to the discussion of wider things than the facts with 
which we were primarily concerned ; for the explana- 
tion of these facts seems to call for statements which 
hitherto have been regarded as a monopoly of theo- 
logian or prophet. We find that these facts confirm 
— in essentials, not in detail — much that Religion has 
taught. If materialistic scientists still remain and are 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 271 

inclined to deprecate this, we can only say that we are 
sorry if we offend, but that we are seeking truth, 
following the indications of the facts, applying all 
known tests, and going out of the old scientific terri- 
tory only when the facts fairly drive us out. But we 
do not go outside of science ; we consolidate our posi- 
tion, bringing the new territory into the scientific realm. 

What, then, is the bearing of psychical research on 
religion ? How does it modify our previous religious 
conceptions ; or, if we had no religious conceptions 
previously, what are those which it supplies or sug- 
gests ? In what follows I must be understood as 
speaking for myself alone, and not for the Society for 
Psychical Research, which, as a body, has no creed 
except that the subject calls for investigation. I am 
probably a fairly average member, but individual 
members naturally differ more or less on many points. 

The results of psychical research bring about a 
radical change in our conception of human personality ; 
of its nature first, before we even begin to question our- 
selves about its destiny. They enlarge it somewhat 
as the new astronomy of three centuries ago enlarged 
our conception of the external universe. They enlarge 
it in two ways, which we may call, for convenience, 
Width and Length. 

Widening of Personality-Conception 

This is mainly through the establishment of the 
" Subliminal," which, though more or less recognized 
under various names by writers such as Hartmann 
and others, was first fully and systematically 
treated, thirty years ago, by F. W. H. Myers, who, 
as Prof. James has remarked, may be said to have 
discovered it. The facts of hypnotism, notably the 



272 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

performance of feats of memory and calculation which 
are quite impossible to the subject in the waking 
state, 1 coupled with the similar phenomena of arith- 
metical prodigies who do not know how they get their 
results, 2 and with the curious facts of multiple per- 
sonality 3 — these, not to mention the ordinary though 
unexplained phenomena of " instinct " and the perhaps 
allied phenomena of dowsing and clairvoyance generally, 
are proofs that the total self is something far greater 
than its present conscious manifestation. This total 
self has been compared, as already remarked, to an 
iceberg, of which only one-twelfth — representing the 
normal consciousness — is ordinarily visible above the 
surface. Or it may be compared to a polygonal 
object resting upon one of its facets on a table. The 
facet touching the table is the normal consciousness, 
the part (of the total self) which is in contact with the 
material world. But the other facets are existing also, 
in a different and higher environment, and the experi- 
ence of the total Self is greater than that of any one 
of the sides. If reincarnation is a fact (I express no 
opinion, for I see little evidence for it, while admitting 
that it is a legitimate speculation) we may visualize 
the polygon as turning over on another side, bringing 
a new facet in contact with the material world. It 
is a different facet, and consequently has no recol- 
lection of the preceding life of the other facet ; but 
it belongs to the same Self as that other, and there- 
fore it is a sort of reincarnation, being a reappearance 
of the same entity. 

1 Dr. Bramwell's experiments, in Proceedings, S.P.R., vol. xii., pp. 
176-203. 

2 Myers's Human Personality, vol. i., pp. 79, 116. 

3 Dr. Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality. 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 273 

In all such figures of speech, however, we must 
remember that we are only inventing them to help 
our thought, which inevitably is shaped so greatly 
by our visual experience ; we must not forget that 
in visualizing as spatial and material a thing which 
is certainly neither (i.e. the mind, or soul, or spirit), 
we are making a risky venture which is sure to be partly 
wrong. But if we are to think and get along at all 
we must construct these thought-models, as we do 
in other sciences — visualizing flying atoms or elec- 
trons, or what not — even if we know them to be 
inadequate. They are useful for the present, and that 
is their justification. The polygon for the tran- 
scendental Self is a legitimate figure, expressing the 
fact — vague if not visualized — that our Self extends 
far beyond our present manifested portion ; that we 
are " greater than we know," as Wordsworth said. 

Lengthening of Personality-Conception 

The Self, we have said, is a wider affair than was 
thought. We are greater than we know. But the 
facts we have glanced at — increased faculty in hypnosis 
and the like — while extending personality in width, 
do not necessarily extend it in length. However great 
the Self's reality may be, the whole may go out of 
existence at the death of the manifesting portion. 
But here come in two important lines of evidence — 
two streams of new facts — which prove extended dura- 
tion as well as extended faculty. These two lines are 
Telepathy and Spiritistic Evidence. If Telepathy is 
a fact — if communication between mind and mind 
really occurs through channels other than the known 
sensory ones — and if, as seems likely, it is not a physical 
process, — it proves at once the existence of a spiritual 
s 

/ 



274 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

world, for it must take place in a world of some sort, 
and the non-dependence of mind on body. Or, if this 
latter can hardly be " proved " by telepathy, it is at 
least rendered likely ; for if telepathy is not physical, 
the spiritual seems likely to be the prius, and the 
material an adjunct. Admittedly, thus far, individual 
continuity is not yet made clear. Telepathy, by sug- 
gesting a common nature in mankind and a probable 
continual small leakage and permeation between mind 
and mind imperceptibly, indeed suggests a sort of pan- 
psyche, a spiritual total in which individuation is only 
temporary, characteristic merely of the present world ; 
a sea in which at present we are the waves. But here 
comes in the spiritistic evidence, of which the S.P.R. 
and other workers have given examples. There is no 
doubt whatever about the significance of this evidence. 
It points most unmistakably to individual survival. 
The Self continues. It is greater than we know, longi- 
tudinally as well as laterally. It has duration as well 
as extent, beyond the bodily manifestation. 

Human personality, then, is extended in duration 
as well as widened in faculty. The Self's powers are 
greater than those normally manifested in the earth- 
life — how much greater we cannot wholly know — and 
its longitudinal existence is a far greater affair than 
the present life, which is but a small section. In my 
Father's house, which is the Universe, are many tarry- 
ing-places, many sections of road, many halting-places, 
and some of them are unpleasant. But they are only 
part of the way, and are only experienced as evils by 
part of the Self; by the whole they are seen to be 
good. A seer with partial sight has said that man 
is a god in ruins ; but a greater has seen past the 
slightly time-damaged frontage to the whole fabric, 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 275 

saying simply : "Ye are gods " (Psalm lxxxii. 6). 
There is no spiritual pride in accepting this doctrine, 
which, indeed, is ratified by One Who was pre-eminently 
meek and lowly in heart (John x. 34). We need only 
remember that it is the total Self that is meant. The 
present sectional manifestation is ungodlike enough, 
we know well ; we do not glorify that — we want to 
improve it and make it more useful ; and this very 
want is a proof of our real greatness, for an ideal in- 
volves a real which we dimly sense and would like to 
draw down and make manifest. 

So much for human personality. But, if we talk 
about religion, we must go beyond the human. In 
the West, at least, a " religion " must have a God. 
What, then, of psychical research and Theology ? 

In all inquiry the most hopeful method is to pro- 
ceed from the known to the unknown. In seeking 
after God, if haply we may feel after Him and find 
Him, it is wise to begin from the standpoint of our 
own most indubitable experience. Therefore, let us 
briefly consider some aspects of that experience. 

There is a difference in degree of certainty in our 
affirmation of things experienced, for memory is un- 
trustworthy and even perception is liable to error ; 
so perhaps the only certain thing is a sensation of the 
present moment. But I leave these hair-splitting diffi- 
culties, and start from the position that each one of 
us is certain of his own experience and of his being 
an experiencing Self. When we have pain we know 
about it, and no amount of argument — not even Chris- 
tian Science argument, which tries — can convince us 
that we are mistaken. The pain is real. So with 
other experiences, in varying degree. We may mis- 



276 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

interpret sensations, mistaking a bush for a cow, and 
the like, but the mental experience — the cow-thought 
— is real. It is a mental fact. 

Closely connected with this inner order of experience 
is our own body. This lump of matter, separated quite 
definitely from the remainder of the material world, 
is associated in some special way with the entity we 
call " I." We do not feel pain outside its borders. 
We are " in " it, manifesting through it, though the 
method of the interaction remains entirely unknown. 
It is as true as when Tyndall said it in 1874, that be- 
tween the physics of the brain and the corresponding 
facts of consciousness there is a gulf that has not been 
bridged — has not been bridged, that is, by our under- 
standing ; for in the actuality there is no gulf — the 
two things do go on together, closely interwoven. 

Pass now beyond the body. We find ourselves in 
an illimitable material universe, compared with which 
our bodies are infinitesimal. In the first place, we are 
on the surface of a planet 8,000 miles in diameter. If 
both land and sea were covered with human beings, that 
living scum would bear the same relation to the mass 
of the earth as a skin about a millionth of an inch 
thick would bear to a very large orange. Is it reason- 
able to think that all the mind in the planet has got 
decanted off into this exceedingly small portion which 
we call " living " matter ? Our bodies are part of 
the earth's mass. The earth is our mother. The 
dead cannot give birth to the living. If the earth has 
produced living things, the earth must be in some 
sort alive. It seems absurd to suppose anything 
else. True, inorganic activity is of a kind different 
from, and more regular and more predictable than, the 
activities of living things ; but the difference may 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 277 

easily be exaggerated. Regularity and predictability 
do not disprove the existence of mind ; for instance, 
the value of the goods stolen in a given area within 
the next year can be closely predicted, else the insur- 
ance companies could not fix their burglary premiums. 
By dealing with large numbers, and striking averages, 
prediction is possible in human affairs, And in the 
inorganic world of physics we are dealing with huge 
aggregates of molecules — a far huger number of units 
than the number of human units dealt with by the 
insurance companies — and this may account for the 
regularity of their activities as seen by us. However 
this may be, inorganic activity there certainly is. 
Molecules, atoms, electrons, are in rapid and ceaseless 
motion. Air and ether are continually undulating, the 
latter with inconceivable rapidity. Is it not difficult 
to believe that all this is going on — not chaotically, but 
in an orderly and intelligible fashion — without some 
Mind behind it ? May there not be a planet-soul, 
energizing through the body of the earth as I energize 
through my body ? Of this Spirit our spirits are parts, 
as our bodies are parts of the earth's material mass. 
I am related to that Spirit somewhat as one of my 
blood-corpuscles is related to me, or as a sensation 
is related to my whole mental content. The sensation 
is remembered ; the individual dies, but is remembered 
— continues to exist in the Earth-Spirit. 

The earth is on a larger scale than we, for it in- 
cludes us, body and soul. It is longer-lived than we 
in our present modes, and its development is accord- 
ingly slower. Its extreme youth of turbulence and 
chaotic strife among its elements, human and other — 
as of a child driven this way and that by its impulses 
— is over, and maturity is being reached. Great and 



278 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

terrible wars are still possible among its human cor- 
puscles, but these latter are at least beginning to desire 
peace. A great nation has temporarily reverted to 
the barbarous stage when war was regarded as the 
natural and right thing, but it is a reversion. The 
Earth-Spirit's aim is plain : greater solidarity, greater 
harmony and interpenetration ; first isolated families, 
every man's hand against every other man ; then tribes 
at constant feud ; then nations occasionally at war ; 
then — in the future — the Federation of the World. 

From the Earth we pass to the other celestial 
bodies, and may permit ourselves to assign a soul-part 
to each, as, indeed, was done in cruder form in earlier 
days. Each planet had its angel — which Kepler was 
accused of irreligion for dethroning by the bald and 
barren formulae of his laws — and the Sun had its Uriel. 
The idea may, after all, be true. In view of the intense 
activity now known to be going on not only on the 
molar but on the molecular, atomic, and electronic 
scale, we can no longer look on non-living matter as 
a mere lump of stuff which does nothing. It is doing 
a great deal ; and if it does it in a way which is orderly 
and comprehensible to our minds, it indicates guid- 
ance and control by something akin to those minds. 
And the movements of the heavenly bodies are orderly 
also, and at the same time awesome and majestic. We 
know little yet of the movements of the " fixed stars," 
or whether the natural guess of some central body or 
focus is true ; but all seem to be in motion, and all 
that we know leads us to believe that the motion is 
systematic and would be intelligible if we knew 
enough. 

Behind the phenomena of the material universe, 
then, we infer a Spirit who manifests through it as we 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 279 

manifest through our bodies. Nature is the body of 

God: 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. 1 

Here, however, presents itself the age-old Problem 
of Evil. Why do sin and suffering exist, even for 
parts ? If God as a whole is perfect, almighty, all-good, 
why do we, who in Him live and move and have our 
being, so continually find ourselves in a condition 
which is very far from being good ? I think this is a 
question which is obviously unanswerable in any final 
way. The smaller cannot comprehend the greater. 
We cannot explain the higher by the lower. Chemical 
and physical laws do not explain man ; he extends 
into higher realms. Man does not explain God ; he 
can dimly surmise by analogies, but God contains and 
transcends him. My blood- corpuscles — billions of them 
— may suffer when I undertake extra exertion, and thus 
may have a Problem of Evil of their own ; but their 
pain may serve my higher purpose, which, if 1 am doing 
useful work, may be justifiable and indeed very good. 
Similarly, our pains may serve God's purposes. We 
may be assisting in labours and processes more august 
than we can conceive. 

I admit, however, that there is something not quite 
satisfactory about this conception of a finite, struggling 
God — for that is what it amounts to. It is true that 
we have the highest authority for it, if Jesus' s saying 
will bear this meaning, " My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work " (John v. 17) ; and philosophers such as 
J. S. Mill, William James, and Professor Bergson have 
inclined to some such notion in order to retain a God 

1 Pope's Essay on Man. In what I have been here saying, it will 
be perceived that I owe much to Fechner. 



280 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

who shall be in close relation to us, near at hand and 
not afar off, as is the Absolute and Unconditioned of 
Dean Mansel and the thoroughgoing Idealists. Perhaps 
compromise may be effected somewhat as follows : a 
compromise which shall satisfy our demand for illimit- 
ability and static Perfection in God, while still seeing 
Divine striving in the universe — in what Emerson calls 
the continual effort to mount and meliorate, out there 
in Nature and within our own souls. I put forward 
this compromise scheme with diffidence, for, though 
it may have occurred to others, I have not seen any 
statement of it. Of course, it is only a speculative 
k way out," and, as already said, all human conceptions 
of this kind must be inadequate representations of the 
reality ; nevertheless, they help us to form some notion 
of it, and this is better than nothing, if it is a worthy 
notion, 

God, we have said, is the Soul of the Universe. He 
is immanent in the material creation, and, if visualized 
only thus, there is strife and suffering and progress 
and dualism or pluralism — within Him ; and this 
seems unsatisfactory. I therefore incline to represent 
God's Personality — in a higher sort of anthropomor- 
phism — as consisting of two portions or aspects corre- 
sponding to what in human personality we call the 
supraliminal and the subliminal. The Divine essence 
which ensouls the material universe, and of which we 
are a part, is His so-to-speak normal or lower self ; 
but beyond and above this — as with our own tran- 
scendental ego — rises and extends the Transcendent and 
Unimaginable Godhead, of which perhaps the greater 
mystics have gleams even now, and which Dante has 
tried to give some feeling of, according to the frame- 
work thought of his time, in the Paradiso. "It is 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 281 

only the finite," says Emerson, " that has wrought 
and suffered ; the infinite lies stretched in smiling 
repose." Similarly sings Mrs. Browning : 

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our 

incompleteness, — 
Round our restlessness, His rest. 

Theology has oscillated between the conception of 
a glorified man, a sort of immeasurable clergyman, 
who sits outside his universe, watching it go, and an 
immanent, striving, finite Principle, manifesting itself 
in all natural phenomena. The first philosophizes it- 
self away into Mansel's Unconditioned and Incompre- 
hensible, who is indeed presented in our Prayer Book ; 
the second lands us in variations of the old and crude 
notion of two great warring Spirits, God and Devil, 
who are very evenly matched if we may judge from the 
" moral " facts of life, though we hold the faith that 
God will win in the end. Both these extremes of 
Transcendence and Immanence are unsatisfactory if 
held alone. The thing to do is to combine them. No 
concept formed by a created being can be greater than 
the Creator's reality ; we need not be afraid of over- 
estimating Deity. God is both Immanent and Tran- 
scendent. He is the Soul of the Universe and, phe- 
nomena being His manifestation, all things and not a 
sporadic few are miraculous ; He does not need to 
step down and interfere with Himself. But He is not 
entirely enmattered. He is Soul of the material 
universe, but He is also more. He transcends it. 
He is comprehensible and finite in His Immanent 
aspect, but He extends into incomprehensibility and 
infinity in His Transcendence. 

The seen things are temporal, the unseen things 



282 PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

eternal. The earth and the heaven shall wax old like 
a garment ; shall pass away and be no more seen. 
But the Spirit of the High and Holy One that in- 
habiteth Eternity shall endure for ever, with all of good 
that we have known — not its semblance but itself. 

With wide-embracing love 
Thy spirit animates eternal years, 

Pervades and broods above, 
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 

Though earth and man were gone, 
And suns and universes ceased to be, 

And Thou were left alone, 
Every existence would exist in Thee. 1 

We may conceive, then, that surviving human 
beings who communicate with us are still within the 
domain of God's normal or immanent consciousness, 
though even in that there will be many grades ; and 
that eventually those souls, with our own and the 
values of the whole temporal order, may be sublimed 
into that transcendent portion which is beyond our 
comprehension. It is almost beyond our apprehen- 
sion also ; but the facts of experience impel to a dim 
inference of its Being, and analogies give it visibility. 
And some few mystics — whether in the body or out 
of it they hardly know — have come into still closer 
touch, achieving certainty of knowledge. We cannot 
dismiss their experiences ; they are data, like other 
data. And there is something in all of us, I think, 
which tells us that these experiences have *a reality 
that is more than subjective. As even William James 
has said, in that direction lies Truth. 

It is well for the Reason to criticize intuitions — 
that is the quite proper function of science and philo- 

1 The last lines that Emily Bronte wrote : Works, vol. 1., p. 81. 



RESEARCH AND RELIGION 283 

sophy. But it is the living experiencing Self that goes 
forward into the new. Religious experience is its own 
warrant to the experient, and even for the outsider it 
is beginning to count, for data require an explanation, 
and the indications are clear. And, even to the cold 
Reason, the facts of psychical research seem to justify 
or require an explanation which confirms the intui- 
tions of the mystic, that Spirit is real — Matter a 
temporary vehicle or medium — a dome of many- 
coloured glass which stains the white radiance of 
Eternity, as Shelley has it. Reason and intuition — 
science and Religion — are thus at last agreed. 



INDEX 



American S.P.R., 35 
Apparitions, 212 
Arnold, Matthew, 249, 250 
Astral shapes, 213 

Balloon simile, 256 

Balzac, 260 

Bergson, 279 

Berkeley, 229 

Blavatsky, 215 

Bournemouth, Letter of A. W. 

from, 61 
Bradford Daily Telegraph, 156 
Bramwell, 272 
Bromwell, 115 
Bronte, Emily, 282 
Browning, Mrs., 281 

Carpenter, Ed., 211 

Chuang Tze, 258 

Clapham, 131, 139, 141 

Cobbe, Miss F. P., 34 

Communicators : — 
Ainsworth, Jonathan, 72-3 
Armitage, Arthur, 60, 110 
Bannister, James, 65-6, 93 
Mary, 69, 74, 93 
William, 112 
Brearley, James, 143-5, 154-5, 

161 
Brownlow, 162 
Burns, 101 
Burroughs, 101 

Charlton, Mr., 30, 31-3, 44, 94-8 
Cobbe, Frances Power, 147 



Communicators — continued : — 
Cockin, Joseph, 167-9 

Jun., 167-8 
Downs, 137 
Drayton, Henry, 17, 21, 22, 25-6, 

85-8 
Driver, Edmund, 41-7, 66, 90, 

97, 98 
Dunlop, Dr., 13, 14, 60 
Edmondson, Rev. George, 146, 

156-160 
Elizabeth, related to Mary 

(grandmother), 114, 116 
Gurney, 148 

Hall, Samuel Carter, 148, 154 
Hanson, John Thomas, 109 
Mrs., 70, 106-7, 109, 111, 114, 
117, 118 
Hey, Ishmael, 79 
Jim, 111, 112, 125 
John, 58, 72-3, 81, 92, 140 
Jonas, 165-6 
Mary, 63-5, 98-9, 113, 122-3, 

169, 178 
Sarah, 122, 124 
Hill, Bannister, 59, 80, 92-4, 
152-3 
Elizabeth, 145-6 
James, 120, 123-4 
Mary, 70, 90, 139, 152-3, 
180-2, 201 
Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 145, 150 
Holden, Amelia (Millie), 130-1, 
134, 165 
John, 130-1 
Lister, 130-1, 164-5 



265 



286 



INDEX 



Communicators — continued : — 
Ingham, Mrs., 119, 121 
Ishmael, 66, 112, 113 
Jonas (Ogden), 60, 82, 99 

Joseph , 108-9, 135, 141 

Jowett, 69, 99 

King, Mr., 67-8 

Lame Woman (Emma Steeton), 

47-50, 70, 73, 77, 100-1 
Leather, Robert Parberry, 14-17, 
19-22, 24-6, 60-2, 71, 76, 
85, 136, 139 
Sarah, 24, 136 
Lee, Betty, 129, 132, 141 
Thomas, 129, 132 
Whetley, 165-7 
Lethbridge, Mrs. ( ? ), 110 
Lewis, Mr., 82-4, 127 
Lodge, Raymond, 186-7 
Myers, F. W. H., 193 
Napier, Mrs., 78, 81, 84, 105, 
108, 115-6, 119, 168-9, 
174-5, 187, 237, 240-1 
Nicholson, Mrs. Alice, 147, 

155 
Purcell, girl unrecognised, 71-2, 
74 
Jabez, 126 
Timothy, 65 
young man, 126 
Robertshaw, Jacob, 172-3 

Ruth, 172-3 
Robinson, Joseph, 111, 125-6 
Sarab, ne'e Hey, 60, 79 
Scanlon, Mickey, 146, 156-160 
Sidgwick, Henry, 145, 190-2 
Sidney, Elias, 18-21, 25-6, 68-70, 

75-6 
Torrington, Benjamin, 64-6 

Helen, 62-4, 67, 80, 102-3 
Tranter, Betty, 99, 100 
Percy, 84 

Verity, 99, 100, 103 
Unnamed and unrecognised 
forms, 68-70, 90-2, 104 



Communicators — continued : — 
Waldron, Thomas, 23, 24-6, 
132-3, 135, 137-8, 140, 168 
Walker, unspecified, 65 
Walkley, Mrs., 29, 30, 90, 119, 
120, 122 
Rev. A. S., 28-30, 77, 91 
Woolsorter, unrecognised, 71 
Young man unnamed, 121-3, 

133-4, 137, 138-40 
Young, Moses, 18, 68, 69 
Connor, Dean Bridgman, 206-7 
Controls and Communicators, 208-9 
Cor. i. 15, 39 
Crucial test, a, 171-4 
Cumulativeness of evidence, 43 

Davis, Andrew Jackson, 267 
Denholme, 127 
Denton, 238 

Difficulty of getting evidence, 198 
Dogs, survival of, 147 
Dreams of the dead, 212 
Drury, Mrs., sitting with, 199 
Dunlop House, 14, 15, 24, 61 

Earth Spirit, 277-8 
Eddy, Mrs., 215 
Elisa, Madame, 36 
Emerson, 2, 280 
Emotional link, 40, 41 
Ethereality of forms, 66-7 

Facial indications, 52 

Falconer, Lanoe, 38 

False statements, 205 ff. 

Fechner, G. T., 279 

Figure " 3," 125, 127-8 

Forms seen by A. W., nature of, 

210-13, 216 
Francis, St., 248, 252-3 

Galileo, 249 
Gladstone, 87 
G. P., 209 



INDEX 



287 



Gradual progress, 203 
Green's " Short History," 38 

Hallucinations, 33-4 

Hare, Dr. Robert, 262 

Herodotus, 245 

Hodgson, Dr. R., 36, 220. (See 

also Communicators) 
Homer, 23 
Horace, 193-6 
Horsman, Dr., 53-4 
Huxley, mentioned at sitting, 187, 

192; quoted, 250-1 

Idealism, 229, 280 
Immortality, 1-9 
Instinct, 272 
Intermediate beings, 260 
Investigation not suitable for all, 
12, 217 

Jennie, 35 

Johnson, Miss Alice, 234, 242 



Knight, Mr. 

237 
Knowlston, 17 



Frank, 42, 78, 



Lang, Andrew, 47 
Latimer, 38 
Letter predicted, 113-5 
Lodge, Lady, 192 

Mr. O. W. F., 195-7 

Raymond, 186-7 

Sir Oliver, 184-7, 190-7, 227, 
230-1, 242, 246, 252, 267 
Longfellow, 5 
Lund, Percy, 128 

MgGabe, Joseph, 216, 225 

McKenzie, J. H., 221 

Maesbury, 115 

Mansel, 280 

May, 1861, reference to, 125, 127 

" Meeting " cases, 13-39 



Memory, untrustworthinees of, 

183-4 
Mind and body, 229 
More's " Utopia," 37-8 
Muscle-reading, 53 
Myers, F. W. H., 185-197, 226, 242, 

245, 252, 271 

New evidences, 13, 42 
Newton, 249 
North, Miss, 173 

Objections to paid mediums, 219 
Origen, 250 

Peer Gynt, 6 
Personality-conception, lengthening 

of, 273 ; widening of, 271 
Peters, A. V., sittings with, 174, 

184 
Piper, Mrs., 32, 206, 208-9 
Places supernormally named : — ■ 

Ford Street, 143 

Levensley, 111-12, 125-6 

Leyton, 162-3 

Yewton, 72-3, 109 
Planchette, 221 
Plato, 244-6, 254-5, 257 
Plotinus, 213 
Polygon simile, 272 
Pope, 279 
Predictions, 90, 103, 113-15, 118, 

125-8, 182 
Problem of evil, 279 
Progress on the other side, 67, 

261 
Psalms quoted, 275 
Psychometry, 235 
Ptolemaic astronomy, 267 
Pythagoras, 267 

Rapping case, 212 
Rapport-objects, 235 
Reincarnation, 3, 272 
Reservoir incident, 129, 132, 141 



288 



INDEX 



Savage, Dr. Minot J., 35 
Schopenhauer, 269 
Shelley, 283 
Sidgwick, Dr. H., 227 

Mrs., 208, 227 
Spheres, 262-7 
S.P.R., 10, 34, 36, 189, 193, 208, 

229, 271 
Stead, W. T., 190 
Stetson, Mrs., 6 
Stott, Edmund, 44-5, 95 
Subliminal knowledge, 46, 256 
Swedenborg, 32, 267 
Symonds, John Addington, 7 

Table of sittings, 170 

Telepathy, 225 ft., 273-4 

Tennyson, 7, 38, 228 

Thomas a Kempis, 257 

Three (warning figure), 125, 127-8 

Time, 3 

Trance-controls, nature of, 207-10 



Transcendence, Divine, 281 
Trevor, Rev. A., 67-8 
Triviality of messages, 202-4 
Two Worlds, 151, 160 
Tyrrell, sitting with, 142 

Urmston, 103-4 

Verrall, Mrs., 242 

Virgil, 8, 256 

Visions of the dying, 33-5, 37 

Whitley, Mrs., 85 

Wilkinson, normal knowledge of 
Mr. Leather, etc., 25-7 ; letters 
from, 57-9, 61, 77 ; not regular 
medium, 205 

Wood, Dr. F. H., 161-3 

Wordsworth, 273 

X, Miss (Goodrich-Freer), 193 
Y, Mrs., case of, 34 



Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C. 
f 20.317 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 196 540 8 



